


paint this place technicolor

by orphan_account



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe- Summer, M/M, One (1) Supernatural Element
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-22
Updated: 2017-11-22
Packaged: 2019-01-29 21:52:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 22,828
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12639903
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: (“There are tree spirits,” Minghao says, sounding numb. “I would ask if you were on crack, but then again, I just saw you explode into flames, so really I should be asking myself that question.”)In the winter, Minghao meets a boy on the streets, who tells Minghao that 1) he's never had pizza and 2) he only exists in the physical plane for a total of ninety-six hours before he and memories of him are wiped off the earth. In the summer, Kwon Soonyoung is dragged into a scavenger hunt to summon a wandering spirit, based on some very reliable graffiti on a convenience store wall.Spoiler alert: these two things are very, very much related.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [junhaos](https://archiveofourown.org/users/junhaos/gifts).



> sarah- good luck on your exams!! thank you so much for talking to me you're really lovely

Jun materializes at exactly midnight.

It’d been snowing before he’d appeared, but now he can feel it on his eyes, his cheeks, settling lightly onto his white shirt and silvery hair. It’s cold. The sky is stark black with a round yellow moon, no stars in sight, and the streetlight casts a pale gold hue onto the pavement.

The neighborhood he’s in doesn’t look any different. Still deserted, the occasional sad string of fairy lights draped over shrubs and awnings, but the roads are completely empty. Jun settles himself on a bench and waits.

\---

At six in the morning, first hints of sun peeking over the horizon, Jun meets someone. His face and hands are numb at this point. As a spirit, it’s not like the cold can kill him, but he’s still somewhat affected.

The boy is shivering, bundled up in a bright blue coat and black scarf. His eyes are big, mouth pink and chapped. He’s kind of beautiful. He’s also staring straight at Jun.

Jun stares right back.

The boy takes a hesitant step toward him. “Who are you?” he asks warily. Keys glint around his fingers, accompanied by metal rings. A punch from him would hurt.

Jun blinks, mesmerized.

The boy scowls. “Hello?”

“Hi.” So _that’s_ how his voice sounds like. Kind of rusty, but he thinks it’s an okay start for a first syllable.

The boy sighs, a quiet little puff of breath leaving his mouth. “I can’t believe this is how I start New Year’s…” he mumbles to himself, and then speaks again at Jun. “Why are you wearing that? Aren’t you cold?”

Jun is wearing a white shirt, white pants, white shoes. It’s standard ghost uniform; he’s aware it’s not what the living wear, but he can’t change into anything until the stores open and that doesn’t happen until a few hours later. The few people who see him this early in the morning usually just assume he’s from the vestige of a dream, the circus, or homeless. Rarely ever has anyone _asked_ him. This is shaping up, he thinks, to be an interesting start to a thirteenth month.

“I’m not cold,” he says, but his teeth are chattering.

The boy raises an eyebrow. “You clearly are.” He starts unwinding his scarf and handing it over, and Jun is so shocked that he actually takes it.

“What are you doing?” _That_ guy must be cold now, and he’s no spirit.

“What does it look like I’m doing?” he snaps. “Look, I don’t know what you’re doing here, but this is a certified ghost town and then you show up dressed like _that_. You taking the scarf?”

“I don’t know.”

“Fine, suit yourself, then.” Although, the boy doesn’t make any move to take it back.

This is not normal human behavior. Jun’s been alive thousands of years— kindness is an exception, not a rule. “Are you usually this nice?”

The boy looks almost _offended_. “Christ, no. But you can’t walk around like this, and it’s New Year’s, and the scarf I got from my aunt on Christmas and it’s kind of ugly. Keep it.” And then puts his hands in his pockets, dips his chin, and leaves.

\---

Jun stands there for a minute before his legs move of their own accord.

He’s lost sight of the boy he’d met by the time he starts walking, and he takes several wrong turns in the unfamiliar neighborhood before he catches up to him outside of what looks like a sad excuse of a shopping plaza.

The guy turns around, and when he does, his eyes narrow, uncertain and fearful.

 _Why are you following me_?

Jun’s a little rusty on social etiquette, too, forgets this might constitute as— if he remembers the term correctly— _stalking_.

Jun holds out the scarf, says, “I really don’t need this. I’m actually dead.”

The thing about yabbays is that they don’t communicate often, mostly because magical resistance makes it like talking underwater through a tunnel of static. But Jun’s heard stories about other thirteenth months, other encounters with the living, and perhaps Jun wants to give the boy back his scarf, but he’s so impossibly lonely. He’s also impossibly rusty at socializing. Jun already realizes this is a terrible way to go about doing these things, given that now the boy looks like he’s a centimeter away from either bolting the other direction or contacting the nearest mental asylum.

Torn between these two options, the boy picks a third one. “You seem pretty alive to me,” he says slowly, eyebrow inched upward, a coiled spring ready to bolt.

“No,” Jun tries to explain. “I just— I mean, I’m a spirit.”

“O… kay.”

The boy who gave him his scarf is gone, replaced with someone disbelieving and unimpressed. A wave of exhaustion crashes over Jun. Maybe he should just quit here. That’s what he’s been doing past thirteenth months, anyway.

Instead, he lights himself on fire.

There’s a white choker around his neck, this thing that contains all of reserves of magic from the past. He’s never really dipped into it, and what he just did doesn’t actually require too much power, but it looks flashy as hell. The boy’s eyes widen and he stumbles onto the ice, landing hard on his knees.

He scrambles back, paling in terror. “Fuck,” he whispers. “Just— what are you?”

Jun extinguishes the flame, cursing himself for being so inept. “I call myself Jun,” he starts, thinking, _this is what a millennium of no social interaction does to you._ “And— that was just to show you I was telling the truth.”

A slow nod. “Okay. Okay, and you can make fire with your hands.” A deep breath. “I’m probably dreaming, this seriously can’t be real. Are you going to kill me?”

Jun frowns. Humans and their _stories_. “No, I’m a neutral.”

“What is my life, I don’t get it.” The other boy smooths his palm over his eyes, like he’s trying to wipe away the last vestiges of sleep. “You know what, I don’t know what’s happening anymore, so, hi, I’m Minghao. Do you—…?”  

“Do I what?”

“Are you expecting offerings?” Jun says nothing, and Minghao just sighs. “Do you want coffee?”

Alright, maybe he didn’t mess up too bad. _I’m Minghao_. “Sounds good.”

\---

Minghao tells Jun it’s fine, he can order, what do you want, and Jun’s only had maybe ten sips of coffee over the course of a millennium (and beer and Pepsi and juice) but he’s always liked the concept of tea, so he asks Minghao to order that if possible. Minghao blinks, says, “I like tea too,” and heads up to the counter.

The sleepy-looking barista at the counter is sitting with her back to the windows and therefore did not see the cute guy lighting himself on fire outside. If she did, perhaps she would be a little more concerned, but she just gets them their food, no questions. Minghao returns with two styrofoam cups, a couple of vaguely snowflake-shaped cookies, and a slip of paper.

“She wants me to give you her number.”

Jun takes the piece of paper, turns it over in his hands. “I don’t have a phone.”

Minghao shakes his head.“Of course you don’t.”

It’s not like Jun could do anything with her number, partially because he doesn’t have a phone, but mostly because he’s literally going to stop existing on the physical plane in a matter of days. He feels bad and tucks it into his pocket anyway. Minghao disregards the action and just takes a sip of his tea.

Jun follows suit and pulls a face. It’s hot, burns the roof of his mouth and his trachea as he swallows it down. “You’re supposed to blow on it first,” Minghao tells him.

“I forgot about that part.”

“Right— okay, then, just—” Minghao shakes his head. “I’m sorry, but I’m really fucking confused. I know you said you’re a spirit, and that’s about it.”

Jun takes another sip, blows on it a lot this time. “I’m a yabbay.”

“That clears it up.”

“Really?”

“ _No_ ,” Minghao says, half-exasperated. “A yabbay? What’s that?”

Jun wets his mouth, asks, “Do you want me to start from the beginning?”

“That’d be really nice, yeah.”

The beginning, that’s a momentous offer. It happened so long ago Jun can barely remember it, but he tries. He tells Minghao his father was part of this group called the Lisan. They’d tried to use dark magic to achieve immortality. To punish them for violations in the code of magic, the gods cursed the children of the members.

There’s maybe one or two hundred of the yabbays, and they walk the earth for eternity. The original rule was that they couldn’t interact with anyone either, but over the course of a millennium a couple of magical beings took pity on them and opened a window between December and January, a thirteenth “month” that spanned a total of four days.

Jun taps his finger on the table. It’s so solid. “I was there for the creation of that loophole. The tree spirit was really nice, said she was sorry she couldn’t do more.”

“There are tree spirits,” Minghao says, sounding numb. “I would ask if you were on crack, but then again, I just saw you explode into flames, so really I should be asking myself that question.”

\---

He and Minghao don’t linger in the coffee shop, partially because Jun felt bad with the piece of paper burning a hole in his pocket, but also because Minghao pointed out he was still wearing those really weird clothes— “yeah, standard ghost attire’s not going to cut it here” — and drags him across the plaza to the local thrift shop.

 _Rocket_ is completely empty at this hour. Minghao tells him the traffic during the rest of the day isn’t much better; that’s why so many of the stores here open so early, to maximize the lack of activity.

“So,” Minghao says, rifling through a stack of ugly wool sweaters and tossing Jun a sky blue one that is significantly less ugly than the rest, “It’s the first day of the thirteenth month, then?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s a little bit insane.”

Jun suddenly recalls something. “You’re not going to remember any of this, too.” Minghao’s neck twists around so fast it’s a wonder he doesn’t get whiplash. “After the window closes everything resets, and time continues onto the next year.”

Minghao opens his mouth, looking strangled. “And you didn’t tell me this when I asked you to start from the beginning.”

Jun shrugs. “It kind of slipped my mind.”

Minghao looks like he wants to say something more, but then he sets his mouth into a line and continues looking through shirts. “What do you mean, everything resets?”

“It’s like these few days never happened.”

Minghao nods thoughtfully, absorbing this. “So, what you’re saying is, if I robbed a bank, no one would remember it?”

Now it’s Jun’s turn to suddenly be a little afraid. “Are you _planning_ to rob one?”

“Probably not,” Minghao shrugs. “Any bank around here isn’t worth its cash.”

He can’t tell if Minghao’s joking. “It wouldn’t matter if you robbed a bank, anyway,” Jun says hurriedly, because the thirteenth month has stopped mattering to him at this point but he doesn’t want to spend it involved in illegal activity, “the money would go back.”

“Shame.” Minghao pulls out a long-sleeved black shirt and hands it to him.

\---

When Jun and Minghao walk out of the store, Jun looks fairly normal, in baggy jeans and beat-up shoes and Minghao’s scarf, which covers up his choker.

Minghao’s staring up at the sky and Jun thinks that this might be when they part ways, and Jun is shaping up the goodbye in his mouth when Minghao suddenly asks, “Why did you tell any of that to me?”

“I…” Jun starts.

The living are concerned with great destinies and sacrifice and prophecy— the reality is that magical beings deal in things much smaller than that. Jun knows of genies who grant wishes because they think someone’s cute, angels who offer protection at the cost of a hello on the streets. The case here is something of a combination.

Joke, joke. Minghao is cute, but Jun’s seen plenty of that in a thousand years. The truth is much more innocent: Jun is lonely, and Minghao somewhat eased that.

“You seemed interesting,” Jun says, finally. “And you talked to me.”

Minghao seems to accept this reason.

“Alright,” he says, and his voice turns businesslike. “So you have four days. Wait, that sounds like a line from a horror movie, ignore me.”

Jun smiles. “That’s the gist of it, though.”

“What have you done during this time during your past years?”

Huh. That’s— well. There was a one-night stand back in Victorian England, an experiment with a roller coaster in Florida— but Jun has stopped trying to be exciting years ago. It’s hard to find pleasure in secular things when you know so much of the history behind them.

“I don’t know,” he says. “Last year I helped out at a soup kitchen.” He’d put some of his magic into the food to make sure it would be excluded from the time loop.

He’s always just been moving around. That’s how he wound up here in the first place. Jun’s been all over the world; there’s not much he hasn’t seen, except for maybe a place to call _home_.

“Yeah, well, that’s not going to be the case this year,” Minghao says firmly. When Jun just blinks uncomprehendingly, he rolls his eyes, asks, “I meant, like, what do you _want_ to do?”

Jun shrugs. The sun is fully up now and the sleepy town’s shaken itself half-awake, and he doesn’t understand what’s going on but he doesn’t really mind at all.

“Don’t know.”

Minghao crosses his arms. “That’s so helpful.”

“I’m sorry.”

Minghao sighs. “If you need to like, teleport to Australia now or something, you can do that.”

“I can’t teleport to Australia. That’d be draining.”

Minghao rolls his eyes. “ _Non-magical_ person right here.”

And then suddenly it occurs to Jun what Minghao might mean. “Wait, so, are you saying you’re not leaving? You want to hang out with me?”

Jun isn’t used to speaking in the vernacular. He’s not used to speaking at all. But he likes the way human slang rolls off his tongue, like jelly and jazz, and thinks that maybe he’s doing it right even if he can’t shape his words the way he’s heard some of the living do. Minghao’s nodding, anyway, eyes averted in embarrassment.

“You’ve basically got another three and a half days here for the year,” he says softly. “And, from what I’m hearing, I’m not going to remember any of this anyway. So yeah, I’d like to, if that’s the case.”

\---

The two of them are seated on the curb outside of the pizzeria, which Minghao promises that they’ll eat at at some point

“Even though I don’t get why you’d want to, that stuff’s sub-par.”

“Do you know how much I’ve heard about pizza?”

Minghao scrunches up his nose. “Back to my previous question, then. What do you want to do?”

“Back to my previous answer,” Jun says. “I don’t know.”

“That’s disgustingly indecisive,” Minghao says, even though the corners of his mouth quirk up in amusement. “Oh, I know, have you ever heard of a bucket list?”

“I’m a yabbay, not a rock spirit, I know what that is,” Jun says, and for some reason Minghao laughs. Jun’s not complaining, though; Minghao’s laugh is a good sound. “Isn’t that for people who are going to die? I’m already dead. Very dead.”

Minghao snorts. “Yeah, but like, what kinda crap do you want to do before you go back to… um, uh…wherever you usually are.”

What _does_ Jun want to do? To be honest, there’s not much. Jun has seen sights all over the world— he was there when Disneyland was built, present for the construction of the Eiffel Tower— and he doesn’t really know anything about social etiquette but he thinks it might be very, very lame if he tells Minghao that having a conversation with someone crosses off any viable thing he can think of.

“I just wanna do some of the normal stuff,” Jun says, slowly. “Whatever you twentieth-century people do.”   

“Twenty-first.”

“Sorry,” Jun says sheepishly. “I forget.”

“Yeah, yeah, and here I thought I would never meet anyone older than my math teacher, he’s like, fucking _ancient,_ basically dead already,” Minghao grumbles. “But I can do normal, if you really want that. Let’s go to my place.”

\---

Minghao’s home is located in what looks like a sad attempt of a neighborhood, like a kindergartner was trying to make a town out of legos but gave up a quarter of the way through. His house in specific looks like a door shoved into a pile of bricks, but Jun likes it. Minghao tells him that there’s a pole upside his window that he’ll climb to get up to the rooftop during the summer, but during the winter it’s slick with ice and he’s got at least some sense of self-preservation.

His parents are divorced, his dad back in China. Minghao lives with his mom, who’s currently on a business trip. Minghao tilts his phone at Jun and shows him the message she’d sent him over WeChat. Jun is starting to understand why Minghao had no qualms about offering to complete whatever Jun wanted for four days.

“My fingers are frozen,” Minghao groans, as he struggles to type a message back in response. “Happy New Year’s,” he mumbles as he types. “I’m with a friend.”

Jun looks over. A few seconds later, there’s a barrage of exclamation marks along with a happy bun sticker.

Minghao types something back and pockets his phone. “That had like, fifteen typos in it, but the message’ll get through,” he says. “It’s weird she won’t remember me sending that to her, though. Shame. She’s super excited that I’m actually talking to someone.”

“Can I ask, if it’s not too personal…”

“You’re fine.”

“Do you not talk to people on a regular basis?”

An uncomfortable shrug. “Not really, in this place,” he admits. “I go to Pledis High and almost everyone I’ve met there so far’s a lazy asshole. Group projects are total hell.”

Jun nods, and Minghao jams a key into his door, jiggling it up and down a couple of times. After what Jun imagines to be a thousand tiny icicles cracking on the lock tumblers, the door creaks open and Minghao steps inside, Jun following suit.

Minghao’s house is nice. Warm. A faded couch nearly blocks the doorway. On the walls are some paper Chinese characters, a couple posters of Kermit the Frog.

“Nice pictures,” Jun says.

“Yeah, well. I had a meme phase.”

Jun gives a startled laugh.

“Still having a meme phase, actually,” Minghao says, looking pleased at this fact. “Hey, Jun, have you heard of dabbing?”

This is how the two of them end up spending the next fifteen minutes, Minghao explaining to Jun various viral dance moves and Jun butchering half of them on first attempt. Minghao’s laughing, this kind of full-body laugh that bunches up his cheeks and crinkles up his eyes, and Jun really likes that, too.

\---

Minghao shows him around his house, which is one floor, no divides between the rooms except for a curtain separating sleeping quarters. There are shelves everywhere, a minimal kitchen for space, boxes aggressively shoved in the corners. Strangely, it could still be described as neat.

Minghao calls it “organized claustrophobia.”

Jun shrugs. “It’s a good kind of full.”

“Debatable. There’s really nothing that interesting in here. A lot of this stuff is from like, third grade.”

Jun picks up a book from a shelf, a manga, asks, “What do you usually do here, everyday?”

“Contemplate death.” The answer comes immediately, like it’s the automatic response before the real one. He juts his chin toward the book. “I don’t know. During the year, schoolwork, but otherwise I read, I guess? Mess around on Twitter?”

Jun thinks. “That’s the one with the blue bird, right? And word limit?”

Minghao nods, lips quirking up. “Yeah. You’d be surprised by how much shit people can say in one-hundred and forty characters.”

Actually, Jun wouldn’t be; he’s heard some stuff in a thousand years. Minghao continues on. “Also, um… I want to make clothing, when I’m older. So I sketch designs sometimes.” He says it like the subject feels awkward on his tongue, like he’s not used to telling people.

“That’s really cool,” Jun says, genuine.

“I guess,” Minghao mutters, but Jun can tell he’s happy.

Jun points at his sweater. “You basically picked the best thing in that entire thrift shop,” he says. “I was wondering how you did that.”

Minghao beams, and Jun would ask to see Minghao’s designs or something, but he figures it’d be better if Minghao offered. He doesn’t.

\---

They spend some of the afternoon watching YouTube videos and Minghao trying to teach random him card games and sports (trying, because it’s winter and Minghao’s house is crammed full.) Minghao seems unsure of himself, when he’s telling Jun stuff, like he’s not sure if Jun would want to learn. Jun wants to tell him that he loves this, even when, during a round of Texas Holdem, neither of them fully understand poker and don’t really have anything to gamble anyway.

They heat up instant noodle soup at six and Jun nearly makes the microwave explode.

“This part of your magic?”

“No,” Jun admits, and Minghao laughs.

After they eat, arguing over whether instant noodle soup is good, Jun on yes and Minghao on _fuck no_ — “I could probably feed you _chopped liver_ and you’d tell me it was amazing” “What’s wrong with chopped liver?” — Minghao does end up showing Jun his designs. He drills Jun with a laser stare as Jun flips through the pages, like Minghao’s afraid he’ll rip it up or something.

“I don’t know anything about clothing,” Jun confesses.

“No shit, with what you showed up to town wearing,” Minghao laughs.

Jun debates on whether it’s worth pointing out that it’s not like he _picked_ those clothes, but then decides not to, because the gods would probably be pissed off if he insulted their fashion sense. “I really like these drawings, though,” Jun says instead. “They’re… simple?”

He’s afraid Minghao will take that the wrong way but Minghao gets it, brightening. “I can’t afford anything designer, you know?” he says, choking around the word _afford_ . “A lot of these are just based off good stuff I saw at _Rocket._ ”

Jun nods, and hands the notebook to Minghao, who tucks it close to him. “I’ll make sure to visit your company in a few years.”

He’s expecting at least a snort but Minghao frowns instead. “Don’t I forget you, though?”

“Yeah, but I don’t forget _you_ ,” Jun says, although now he’s wondering about the mechanics of having to introduce himself to Minghao again next year.

It makes his chest feel tight, disturbs him a little, that his subconscious already decided that it wants to see Minghao again. Three hundred and sixty-five days later, Jun probably won’t even be anywhere near this town. Three hundred and sixty-five days later, he’ll still be in his cycle. The logistics of it are near impossible. And then there’s the fact Minghao won’t remember him, at all.

“Oh,” Minghao says. “Well, thanks for saving a brain cell for me, then.”

“I’ll need more than one brain cell for you.”

“Two?”

“Come on, give yourself some more credit. Eight. At _least_.”

Minghao just hums, turns away. Outside, the sky is completely dark; it must be a cloudy night, since there’s no moon to be found.

Minghao sighs, saying, “It’s kind of late out. We can figure out a game plan tomorrow, if you still want to, like. Stay.”

“Yeah, of course,” Jun says.

Minghao and Jun drag out a sleeping bag from one of the old boxes and spread it out on the floor next to Minghao’s bed. Jun tells Minghao he can take the sleeping bag because there’s no point in taking the bed if he’s not even certain it’s even possible for him to sleep. Turns out, it’s not— he stays awake all night— but he doesn’t mind at all.

\---

Jun learns that Minghao wakes up every morning at six, because music cuts through the quiet right as the sun’s rising and startles Jun upright. It’s a good song, but then again, Jun likes music in general. Sound doesn’t transmit very well through his curse.

Minghao groans and swings his legs over his bed, pulling on a sweatshirt. “I’m so tired.”

“Sleep more, then,” Jun suggests.

“One, I’m physically incapable of doing that, and two, _you_ haven’t seemed to sleep at all, and I’m not that bad of a host.”

Minghao pours himself some cereal and tilts the milk carton over it, sighing when nothing comes out. He jabs a plastic spoon into it and dry-eats it, loud crunching filling the air. Jun’s not sure if he’s allowed to eat, too, and he’s also _mildly_ concerned that everything in Minghao’s house seems to be instant and packaged, but then Minghao rolls his eyes and pours him a bowl too and Jun dismisses that question.

Morning sun filters through the broken shutters, illuminating the dust motes, and Jun thinks, this is nice, the two of them sitting cross-legged on the couch, eating cereal. Even if it’s dry, Jun doesn’t mind. Not like he’s ever eaten cereal with milk, and Cheerios are a good invention on its own.

“Why’d you pick this town, anyway?” Minghao asks, chewing. “Not a complaint, just a question.”

Jun shrugs. “I lose track of time, if you can’t tell.” Sometimes he forgets what century it is. “I don’t know, I’ve gone to a lot of places. I guess I just happened to be here when the past year ended.”

Minghao taps a pencil against his thigh. “You’ve got unfortunate luck,” he laughs, and Jun wants to say _but I met you,_ but that might be crossing a line. “There’s nothing much to do around here. I guess I could show you the park? And then the _Smile Flour_ for lunch…”

“What’s _Smile Flour_?”

“Local pizza place, the one you said you wanted to eat at yesterday.”

Jun floats upward a little in excitement. “Ooh, yeah, I’ve never had pizza.”

“Well, that’s one problem I’m fixing,” Minghao says. “But after that I’ll try and figure out a way to get us to the city. Pledis is like, five square miles, tops.”

“It’s a good five square miles from what I’ve seen,” Jun says generously.

“Try being here your whole life,” Minghao mumbles, and Jun thinks he can hear a little bit of sadness in Minghao’s words. “But yeah, that’s the game plan, then. If you don’t mind. I’m sorry, it kinda sucks.”

“I told you,” Jun says gently, “I just want normal. Thanks for doing this for me.”

“No problem. I mean, c’mon, how often does an actual ghost visit your ghost town? I’m still lowkey wondering if this is a crack hallucination. I don’t even do crack.”

\---

It’s a good game plan.

They print out a bad, grainy picture of the town and start walking around. The cold cuts through Jun’s jeans and his cheeks; they must be as pink as Minghao’s at this point. Minghao seems immune to the cold, even if his lips are chapped and his hands are dry and cracking, blinking the wind out of his eyes with an apathetic expression.

“First stop of the world’s most depressing tour, the park,” Minghao says. Pledis park is this tiny thing with two baby slides and a swingset, a picnic table to the side covered with a mound of snow. “Even as a six year old I understood this park is pathetic.”

Jun can’t disagree with that. “It’s not that…”  

“I can _hear_ you struggling. Don’t even try to say something nice.”

Jun brushes some of the snow off the table, traces his hand over the swirls etched over the plastic sidings of the park in an attempt to liven it up a little bit, touches his hand onto the metal of the swingset. It’s the kind of swing built for kids, the kind made for the purpose of having someone else push you.

“Hey,” Jun murmurs, “do you wanna go on the swing, though? I can push you.”

“What?” Jun thinks maybe he said something wrong, but then Minghao says, “Dude, hell yeah, why not.”

Minghao brushes the snow off and sits down, and Jun pushes him, and then after ten minutes Minghao tells him its his turn, and the chain creaks and the metal links are frozen to the touch and Jun’s pretty sure his ass turns into a popsicle when it touches the seat, but going on the swing feels a little bit like flying.

They leave the park at around eight and head around to the rest of the town. Pledis High (" _Stop No. 2, personal hellhole from September to June"_ ) is dry and crumbling and deserted, and the smoothie shop _Seventeen_ (“ _Stop No. 5, where I work with people who can’t tell the difference between a strawberry and a pineapple"_ ) even more so. They go inside the theater and watch a crappy B-movie that came out maybe five months ago, and Jun spills about half the popcorn on the floor, much to Minghao’s disappointment.

They eat it off the ground anyway. It’s actually kind of disgusting, but then again, Jun can’t interact with most solid foods for most of the year.

For lunch, Minghao takes him to _Smile Flour_ as promised, and Minghao watches in slight amusement and trepidation as Jun basically inhales half a pizza in two minutes.

“So I’m assuming this was a good move,” Minghao says.

“The best move,” Jun agrees. “This makes me believe in humanity again.”

“Seriously?”

“A little bit,” Jun says, even though he’s been alive a thousand years and nothing’s going to fix what he’s seen at this point. “This stuff is amazing.”

Minghao grins. He’s eaten two slices at a more reasonable pace for a human being, but then again, Jun’s technically a spirit, so rules are different for him.

Minghao neatly folds his napkin and places it inside the grease-stained pizza box, absentmindedly swipes his arm across his mouth to get rid of any residual smears. “This is basically the last part of the town I know, so we’re going to the city after this.”

“Sounds good to me.”

“Everything resets as soon as the thirteenth month is over, right?” Minghao asks. “I need to ask this before I accidentally cause bankruptcy.”

“Yeah,” Jun says. He could tell Minghao that there are exceptions, that if Jun really, _really_ wants to, he can exempt small objects from the time loop (what he did with the food at the soup kitchen last year), but he doesn’t really see the point of making it even more complicated. Everything resets, period, unless otherwise noted.

Minghao nods. “Excellent.”

\--

They go back to Minghao’s house first so he can pack a backpack and send a message to his mom that yes, he’s doing fine, no, he’s not up to anything, really, he’s just going to stay home today and catch up on math for next semester. Jun has to hold back laughter the whole time Minghao’s typing out his lies.

“It’d be simpler if I had a car,” Minghao grumbles. “But you’re stuck with me trying to operate public transportation.”

“I don’t mind. It’s like an adventure, right?”

Minghao turns to look at him. The sky’s a brilliant blue but there might be something even brighter in the brown of his eyes. “Yeah,” he murmurs. “Something like that.”

The paper map of his town is crumpled up in Minghao’s fist, and he says there’s a bus kiosk located at the very edge. Jun’s willing to take his word for it, and they’ve walked for an estimated twenty minutes now, Jun’s legs freezing inside his baggy jeans. His mouth is numb.

They reach the kiosk and Minghao scrutinizes the directory printed on the side, fishes out a couple of loose coins from his coat. “I can’t believe I’m doing this,” he says. “I can’t believe this entire thing is happening. I still don’t completely think you’re real.”

“I assure you, I’m real.”

“Are you sure you want to go, then? I’m not holding you to this. You can leave.”

Jun stares at him straight on, says, “I’m not leaving. Are you?”

Minghao grins. “Nah, you’re crazy if you think I’m not going to pull through.”

The bus pulls up, and Minghao and Jun walk up the steps and Minghao deposits the money into a little slot next to the bus driver, telling him _good afternoon._ Minghao grabs onto a pole and Jun follows suit, although he’s careful that their hands don’t overlap.

“My mom used to take me to the city when I was younger a lot,” Minghao says. “We’d go every other weekend. And then I don’t know what happened.”

“Did you like that?”

“Shit, man, I loved it,” Minghao says, and his eyes are far away. “I’d do this every day if I could, you know? But there was always the issue of money, which, you know, is not an issue for today.”

Jun opens his mouth to reply, but then the bus lurches and Jun’s thrown onto Minghao, and he’s glad there’s not too many people on the bus because _this_ , Jun’s never done this before. He’s never been so up close to someone’s face, breathing in the same oxygen, their eyelashes brushing his cheek, trying to right himself with the world wobbling back onto its axis, like he could even possibly recollect.

“Sorry,” Minghao mumbles. His face is red.

“You’re good.”

“Gravity sucks.”

And Minghao grins when Jun starts telling him about that one time he tried to fly, how he’d passed through several telephone poles and then nose-dived into the watery canals of Vienna.

“God, going by bus must seem so boring compared to that,” Minghao says, and Jun doesn’t know how to tell him that the swooping feeling in his stomach when he flew is nothing compared to how unsettled he feels right now.

\---

Forty-five minutes later they spill off the bus and into the city. The city is familiar in the way all cities look alike to Jun, big or small, neon storefronts and blocky advertisements, warmly lit with mid-afternoon sunlight.

“Alright,” Minghao says. “So we’re staying here for a night, so we need to find the hotel.”

“The hotel?”

“Unlike you, some of us need places to sleep, you know.”

Jun fiddles with his choker and nods, and they walk around for a bit until they reach a hotel called _The Performance Unit_. Minghao tells him it’s three-star, eighty dollars a night, and Jun kind of fades into the background while Minghao talks to the clerk.

Minghao returns with a keycard and a traumatized look on his face. “He thought we were married. I’m in _high school_. And you… well…”  

“Maybe we eloped.”

“That’s illegal. And why are you on his side?”

“I’m not on his side, I’m just saying, we didn’t necessarily _have_ to abide by the law.”

“You know what, I’m not going to discuss potential marriage scenarios with you, that’s fucking weird. C’mon, our room’s P17.”

P17 is a simple thing with two beds and a cabinet; the clerk had apparently offered Minghao one of the “honeymoon suites,” but Minghao had vehemently declined. Minghao takes off his backpack and pulls out a crumpled heap of bills and a pile of coins, counting.

“I have to pay for everything in cash, since my mom would be notified of credit card activity,” Minghao tells him. Jun nods, pretending like he understands financial transactions. Minghao is by no means fooled. “You know what— just, nevermind, know that we’re set for the next couple of days.”

“I’ll take your word for it.”

“Yeah, you’re kind of incompetent, but it’s not your fault.”

Jun’s not even offended.

\---

Minghao does research on his cell phone for some of the afternoon, and they check out the square their hotel’s at. The hotel’s squished between two clothing stores that Minghao proclaims cesspools of overpriced knock-offs, and a restaurant that actually smells really good. Minghao looks like he wants to take his eyes out with a fork when he sees the prices on the menu.

“This pasta is worth, like, two of my kidneys,” Minghao says numbly.

“Is it really? I haven’t checked the recent prices of the black market, but I’m fairly certain you’re kidneys are worth more than thirty—”

At the expression on Minghao’s face, Jun falls silent. “Most of my meals are five dollars, tops,” Minghao says. “I know everything’s going to reset. I just feel _really bad_ paying so much.”

“Do you want to go somewhere else, then?”

Minghao opens his mouth, closes it, before saying, “We should save the money, we’re spending another day here…”  

They end up finding a fast food restaurant a half mile downtown and eat there, and Jun doesn’t even care about the food if it means he gets to see Minghao sitting cross-legged on a ripped booth, taking small bites out of a hamburger with his hands wrapped around the neatly-folded foil wrapper. Minghao’s hands look like they could snap, but Jun has the feeling that’s not the case, as Minghao seems to be an amalgamation of contradictions and Jun sees no reason why his hands should be any different.

They get back around ten. Minghao’s already basically claimed one of the beds with his backpack so Jun settles himself on the other one. There’s about four pillows and several layers of blankets, and it’s too neat, too organized, so Jun messes it up a little bit and only pulls the comforter on.

Minghao laughs at Jun’s fascination with the tiny shampoo bottles. “Is soap your version of cocaine?”

“Shut up,” Jun mutters. The hotel isn’t that fancy but there was probably a bulk sale on conditioner or something— there’s five, light pinks and silvery blues and apple greens, with names like _Adore U_ and _Berry Ice_.  

Minghao shakes his head, says, “I’m never letting you into Bath & Body Works.”

Minghao gets into the bed around eleven, setting his alarm for the next day and turning off all of the touch-operated lamps. Jun wonders what kind of spell he’d need to be able to sleep.

“This is such a nice mattress,” Minghao mumbles, as he’s drifting off. “Like a cloud.”

Jun smiles into the dark. “A _cloud_?”

“Shut up, tell me you haven’t wanted to sleep in the sky at some point in time.”

\---

Sevete Square’s hosting a winter festival from three to ten, but that’s in the afternoon, so they wander the city for most of the next morning. They probably look like ordinary tourists, what with Minghao snapping photos of anything that catches his attention. Jun doesn’t tell him those are going to stay. He’s pretty sure Minghao already knows, anyway.

“Hey, Jun, smile,” Minghao says, aiming his phone at him.

Jun brings up his hands to cover his face and Minghao snaps a photo anyway, scrutinizing the results. “I wasn’t _ready_ ,” Jun whines.

Minghao mutters, “What the hell, how are you so photogenic,” and then, “Hey, I guess I can say I caught a ghost on camera.”

Jun keeps his mouth shut. _Don’t ruin this, don’t ruin this…_

Minghao doesn’t try to take anymore photos of him after that, to Jun’s semi-relief, and the two of them walk past a bunch of overly specialized shops, for ice cream cones ( _it’s winter, tell me I’m not the only one here who doesn’t give a crap_ ), stationary ( _Minghao, look, it’s one of those frogs you like!_ ), and wedding gowns.

Jun gestures at the filmy white veil in the store windows. “I would look _amazing_ in one of those.”

Minghao shrugs. “Not gonna lie, when I first saw you, I thought you were about to get married.”

“You what?”

“You were dressed in all white. It was just for a second.”

“Ah. Yes. That.” Jun frames his face in his hands. “I’d make for some great ceremony photos, you know.”

Minghao laughs. “As a spirit, do you get to choose how you look?”

“Hmm? No, this was the form I was in when I was, you know, made into a yabbay,” Jun says. It’d been a painful ritual; he hadn’t had say in any of it. “Why?”

Minghao looks away. “... No reason.”

Jun raises a suspicious eyebrow but can’t figure out what Minghao would even be trying to hide, so he gives up. They end up walking into a store called _I’m Wearing a Hat,_ lets Minghao mourn the prices while the sales lady glares daggers at him.

Minghao doesn’t buy anything, though, because, as he reasons, everything in these few days will be erased as soon as they’re over. Jun can’t argue with that logic, but to be honest, he’s kind of impressed by Minghao’s self-control, that with this knowledge he’s still not doing anything that could be considered outrageous or illegal.

He just wants a hat.

“Hey, Minghao,” Jun says, and kind of stutters over his next words, because he’s never made this offer before.  “I could make something stay.”

“What?” Minghao asks, and his eyes light up. “You’re staying?”

Jun’s taken aback. “No… I said I could make something stay.”

“Oh, I heard you wrong, then,” Minghao mumbles. “What do you mean by that?”

Jun doesn’t really let it show, but he’s had a good magical education, as his father was one of the leader of the Lisan. It’s not something he’s really given thought to, because no amount of human magic can break him out of the yabbay curse without, at least, the most dire of consequences, but the magic in his choker allows him at least this.

“I mean, you could buy something, and I could actually make it stay,” Jun says, and Minghao tilts his head, frowns. I’m just taking it out of the time cycle. So, if you wanted to buy one of those ridiculously expensive hats, you could.”

And Minghao sighs. It’s like this really frustrated sigh, and he says, “I’m not going to ask you to spend your powers on a _hat_ , Jun. Doesn’t it drain you, or something?”

Jun shrugs. “It’s a small thing.”

“There’s not anything here I want to make stay. Except, for, well.”

Minghao pauses. It’s a thick pause, a long pause.

“I wanna buy you something, though,” Jun says, and as he says it, he realizes that’s true. He hasn’t considered the mechanics of his powers in literal centuries, but if he’d have to use them for something, it would be now. He can’t make Minghao’s life perfect, not even close, but he can do this. “Don’t you guys do Christmas? It’s a late present.”

Minghao scowls. “Are you guilt-tripping me with _Christmas_?”

“Yes.”

“Fine,” Minghao relents. “I can’t believe you’re forcing me to accept a gift.”

Jun smiles. “What do you want?”

Minghao worries his lip between his teeth, and Jun can’t stop looking at the motion. “Um,” Minghao says slowly, hesitant, because he knows as soon as he says the word Jun will act. “I pierced my ear at the beginning of the school year, but my current earrings kind of suck…”

“Okay, done.”

“You _seriously_ don’t have to do this for me.”

Jun just waves this off, and they walk into a store called _Shining Diamonds_ , which is confoundingly high-end, and also will be confoundingly missing about a thousand dollars of store inventory in January. Jun can’t really bring himself to feel guilty over it, though. From what he’s seen of it, capitalism is an unforgiving invention.

Minghao shoves his hands in his pockets. “I’ve never even _been_ in one of these places before.”

The store is an intimidating thing. There’s an almost palpable aura of wealth surrounding the customers, except for those who are looking at the display cases to look, leaving fingerprint-smears on the glass cases and pissing the cashiers off. The jewelry is bathed in florescent glow, chains agleam, zeroes illuminated by the light of the pendant.

“Alright,” Minghao says weakly, tapping on one of the boxes. Jun looks; it’s a pair of earrings shaped like silver moons. “This is two hundred dollars. Oh my god. I can’t believe I’m doing this. I feel like a sugar baby.”

“... Sugar… baby? What’s that?”

“Nothing, nothing. Forget I said anything at all.”

The sales clerk is giving them both _very_ suspicious once-overs, and the truth is that they definitely don’t look like anyone else in here, Minghao with the obvious holes in his jeans and his faded sweatshirt, telling his friend what he wants.

“It’s relatively cheap compared to everything else in here,” Jun says, because Minghao looks like he might simultaneously cry or vomit looking at the price tag.

“And yet it still costs more than all my organs combined.”

Jun’s seriously concerned with whether Minghao’s actually involved with the black market, but he has noticed a spike in hyperbole and indirect phrasing in terms of language over the course of centuries. He has to admit it makes talking fun, though, like a game, so much that Jun’s naturally slipped into it with Minghao.

Next to the earrings is a pair of earrings shaped like gold stars, the two of them part of the _Myimv Celestial Set_. “Sorry for taking away your pair,” he murmurs absentmindedly.

Jun looks away.

\---

They eat at an arcade for lunch; Minghao gets a roll of tokens and a tomato sandwich, splits it with Jun, and the two of them play a couple of games after that. Minghao is _insanely_ good at DDR, enough that he ends up having some guy ask to verse him Minghao wins, to Jun’s delight, although Jun feels significantly less delighted when the guy writes his number on Minghao’s hand.

 _It’ll disappear in a couple of hours,_ Jun tells himself, although for some reason he’s struggling not to use up another ounce of trivial magic to do some Sharpie removal.

Probability is a terrifying thing, from gambling to photosets to arcade games, and they win a total of maybe five tickets after using up the entire token roll because luck is just not on their side.

“Everything’s rigged,” Minghao declares, eying their small ticket chain in distaste. “I think we can buy either a plastic spider ring or strawberry dust.”

Jun doesn’t like spiders, and neither does Minghao, so they get a tiny tube of strawberry dust and exit the arcade. They only end up getting about half of the candy because Jun accidentally puts an end of it into his mouth and the plastic crumbles to mush, and then he accidentally chokes on the dust, and Minghao finally tosses the thing into a nearby trashcan despite the fact he didn’t get much of it either and proclaims, “You would be _so_ bad at doing cocaine.”

After about five detours they make it to main square, a half-mile by half-mile block of festivity by the name of _Sevete Plaza_. The sky is a painstaking blue, sidewalks surrounded by mounds of snow and sprinkled with salt.

“It’s so pretty,” Jun murmurs.

“I’m kind of sick of Christmas music at this point, but agreed.”

They buy hot chocolate from a nearby vendor and Jun takes a sip. It’s very sweet, warm against his hands, thick with whipped cream and chocolate curls on the top.

Minghao groans and Jun’s alarmed by how sexual it sounds. “This is so much better than the instant stuff.”

Jun doesn’t even know what the instant stuff tastes like. “This tastes like sugar.”

“That’s what it basically is,” Minghao laughs. “Sugar with some added sugar. You know I’m on a diet most of the year?”

“Really? Why?”

“Yeah. For dance club. It sucks. I wonder how many calories this would be usually?”

“No wonder you’re so good at DDR.”

“Nah, you just lack any coordination.”

More people fill into the plaza, buying hot food and drinks. Nearby on the benches, there’s a couple wrapped up in each other, a mom with her baby, a giggling group of middle school girls. There’s a band setting up onstage, people in costume around the block offering pictures, a stark contrast to the empty town he’d started the month in.

Minghao’s looking at them, too, a wistful smile on his mouth. “I wonder how they’d react if they knew you were a yabbay. Or like, a spirit.”

“I don’t know. Let’s not find out, you were kind of scared when I brought out the fire.”

“I was _not_ ,” Minghao argues, although his shoulders slump in surrender. “Again, it’s not like that kind of thing happens everyday, so it was shocking, to say the least?”

Standing there, being part of the celebration, makes Jun’s heart clench in this kind of way he doesn’t even know how to explain. The orchestra has gotten set up, playing this layered melody that cuts clear and crisp through the cold air. Jun doesn’t know how their fingers haven’t frozen on the bows yet.

 _This is so nice_.

Minghao comments, “I wish I could play the violin.”

Jun kind of wants to, too. “Or any instrument in general,” he says. “I want to learn how to play the piano. Like, there’s eighty-eight keys, you know? You can do a lot with that.”

“Don’t you have thousands of years left?” It’s soft.

“I do, but I can’t interact with solid objects.”

That doesn’t even cover half of it. The technicalities of his curse go on for miles, but it’s a _curse_ , it’s meant to be as painful as possible. His feet can connect with most things— that’s how he travels, after all, and the reserves of magic in his past lifetime are stored in his choker— but he can’t touch, taste, smell a lot of stuff. Music and art are some of the most beautiful things in the world, but he can’t make any of it.

The few magical beings who have taken pity on the yabbays, that’s probably not very high on their list of priorities.

Minghao clearly doesn’t know how to respond to that, finally just says, “Sorry, I forgot.”

Jun dips his chin and the subject drops, although the two of them are more conscious of the orchestra after that.

A truth: sometimes, Jun wishes he existed.

\---

There’s a pond frozen over at the side of the festival that a lot of people are skating over, a couple of people who are actually professionals doing loop-de-loops and double axels, but most of them just amateurs at best. Jun watches as a little girl crashes on her butt and is glad that the resulting tailbone bone will be erased.

Minghao catches Jun staring, asks, “Do you _want_ to go do that?” He sounds reluctant at best, judgmental at worst.

“Do you not?”

Minghao shakes his head, a slight smile on his mouth. “Nah, I prefer solid ground.”

“That _is_ solid ground.”

“That, my friend, is water. We’re not built to go there,” Minghao says. “Besides… people will think we’re on a date, you know. People already think we’re on a date.”

Jun doesn’t really get it.

“Nevermind, I don’t know what I’m saying,” Minghao says. “You can go, Jun. I’ll just stand on the sidelines.”

“Okay…” he stops. “Any reason?”

“There’s no tragic backstory, I just feel like I’ll fall through.”

Jun doesn’t push it, just goes up to the nearby skate rental and pulls a pair onto his feet, clumsily looping the dirty laces as tight as they’ll go. Jun’s gotten a lot of practice with walking over the years but on the skates he feels the farthest thing from ungraceful, and it’s enough to make him laugh when his feet touch the ice.

A thousand years of existence and it’s not enough to prevent him from falling on his ass.

It’d be better if Minghao was with him but this is good too, when he gets semi-ahold of his skates and is able to get a few meters without tipping over, although he nearly smashes into the little girl he’d seen fall earlier, her dad glaring daggers while Jun apologizes profusely. Jun notices that there _are_ a lot of couples on the ice, though, and thinks back to what Minghao had said about a date.

He skates an idle circle, nearly crashing into a pole, and knows that whatever he and Minghao are doing right now, it’s not a date. They’re never going to go on a date. They’re never going to do anything after tomorrow. The thought makes Jun’s chest feel heavy, his ankles throb in the confines of the skates, and he gets off after thirty minutes and awkwardly hobbles to the bench.

“You looked like you were having the time of your life out there,” Minghao says, walking up to Jun as he’s struggling to unlace his skates.

Jun says, “My feet kind of hurt now, but that was nice, yeah.”

“Are you just trying not to make me feel bad?” Minghao laughs. Jun yanks at the knots— how do the living _operate_ their shoes? “Here, let me help you.”

“I feel a little bit guilty that you just had to stand there and watch me,” Jun admits, watching as Minghao picks at Jun’s knots with his fingernails. “You’d probably have been doing something else…”  

Because Minghao’s been spending his entire thirteenth month trying to make sure Jun has a good time. Who even _does_ that, anyway?

Minghao waves this off. “No, it’s cool, I talked a little bit to this one kid. I was helping him and his dog build a snowman. I’d be fine even if you stayed on the ice a little longer.”

Jun nods. “Good to know.”

\---

Nine o’clock is the fireworks. The skies are completely dark, the square lit up by neon lights. People have claimed spots in the plaza, Minghao and Jun near one of the Christmas trees, vendors going around offering hand warmers, which they don’t buy because Minghao is a rational person who wants to make sure they have enough change for the bus fare tomorrow.

Jun accidentally brushes his hand against Minghao’s. “Your fingers are _freezing_.”

“Like my heart.”

“Isn’t the saying that cold hands mean a _warm_ heart?”

“Where do you hear these things, Jun?” Minghao says loftily. “That makes no sense.”

Jun’s watched fireworks before but he’s never watched them with someone, has never watched them with Minghao, blues and reds illuminating his face as he stares up at the sky in wonder. A particular loud boom results in a firework the shape of Saturn and Jun thinks that even the gods themselves might keel over at the smile on Minghao’s face.

Minghao says, “This is like, birthday sparklers on steroids.”

“Does that mean you like them?”

“I feel like you already know the answer to that.”

Minghao’s falling asleep on Jun’s shoulder as the two of them make their way back to the hotel, relieved for the warmth of the heater. Despite his exhaustion, he still manages to stay awake on his feet long enough to pack up his bag for tomorrow, gently setting the earrings on the bedside cabinet.

“We leave at eight in the morning, okay?” Minghao murmurs, but it’s more like he’s talking to himself with how much control over his voice he has right now.

“Fine with me. Get some sleep.”

“Night. Or not night. Whatever.”

“Night or not night, Minghao. The dream spirit loves you.”

“What the hell?”  

\---

Jun spends hours trying not to think about _tomorrow_.

Minghao’s internal clock is so dysfunctional that he wakes up at six despite the fact he’d gotten six hours of sleep, _tops_ , and only manages to stay in bed another thirty or so minutes before getting up and going about his business, taking a shower— _Jun, no, we don’t get to bring the soap home_ — and bringing a couple of muffins back from the breakfast bar.

And Minghao puts the earrings in. They look good, like they were meant to be there. Minghao touches them, says, “Thank you for your attempt to make me less ugly.”

“You’re not ugly at all.”

It must come out overly sincere because Minghao blushes fast and red for a second before recomposing himself. “Well, that’s nice to know.”

The two of them head downstairs for Minghao to turn the keycard in, looking like he’s about to have an aneurysm when the clerk tells them he hopes they enjoyed their stay, innocuous words accompanied by a highly suggestive wink. There’s a light snowfall, flakes drifting onto Minghao’s hair, his coat, and Jun’s got the craziest urge to brush them off. But he doesn’t, and they stand at the bus kiosk, Minghao’s lips red and chapped from the cold, eyes bright as always as he scans the time slots.  

The bus rolls in seventeen minutes later. There’s open seats in this one, so there’s no opportunity to stumble into Minghao again. Minghao is quiet, staring at the windows as they roll by with a facial expression that might be dread.

“You good?” Jun asks.

“Hmm?” He looks so far away. “Yeah, I am. Just… don’t want to go back, I guess.”

Jun has nothing to say to that.

“It’s like the opposite of homesickness. Don’t worry about it, happened to me when I went back to China last summer. I guess I get attached quicker than I’d like.”

Jun nods, still mute, and Minghao’s clearly uncomfortable with what he just said because he flips open his phone and fidgets around with absolutely nothing in particular, sighing when his little pixelated smiley face character dies by a mine explosion.

They get off, and it’s so different from the city. So quiet. Eerily quiet. Jun feels this suffocating sense of loneliness, and he wonders if this is what Minghao meant.

“So what do you want to do now?” Minghao asks, soft. “Before midnight?”

“We can just, like.” Jun doesn’t even know. “I don’t know.”

“Same here.” Minghao’s eyes are regretful. “I’m sorry.”

“No, don’t apologize,” Jun immediately responds. “I like that you’re here, okay? I’d be happy with just talking to you or whatever for a last few hours.”

Minghao’s mouth barely quirks up, a shadow of a smile. “I can do that.”

\---

It’s the afternoon when Jun messes up.

They eat lunch at _Smile Flour_ again, Jun trying pineapples on his pizza, to Minghao’s utter disgust, and finding it a good combination, and then they watch anime on illegal streaming sites on Minghao’s phone.

Jun thinks he’s got it figured out. Minghao’s always wondering if they’re not spending the time right, not understanding that there’s no way to spend the time right, not when Jun’s been here for thousands of years. Jun is tired of cathedrals and adrenaline and shining diamonds. Crappy pizza is a good way to spend the time. Anime is a good way to spend the time. Minghao with moons in his ears and stars in his eyes is a good way to spend the time.

“So at midnight,” Minghao says, five PM and midway through Crunchyroll’s painfully long commercial break. “Is it just… like it never happened? Nothing.” It’s dangerous territory and Minghao came looking for a fight.

There’s a painful silence, and Jun simply says, “Yeah.”

“You don’t do anything about it.”

“I can’t.”

“Right. You’re _cursed_.” Minghao derisively laughs, dry and bitter.

Jun feels like he’s been thrown out to the ocean with no idea how to swim. He doesn’t know where this came from, but he gets it, as the sky turns dark and the sound of the clock ticking gets louder, like time is fragmenting and a voice whispers, _this is it_. Jun swallows, throat dry. “I— I just remembered. I still need to make your earrings stay.”

Minghao stays completely still.

And this is when Jun messes up. He reaches over, with the full intent of pressing his thumbs to Minghao’s earlobes and whispering the necessary spell to transfer his magic. But his hand brushes Minghao’s hair, the slightly rough skin of his cheek, and Jun ends up pressing his mouth to Minghao’s lips and whispering his name instead.

Minghao kisses back.

It’s a mess, partially because Minghao’s subconscious seems to be conflicted between kissing him and killing him, and Jun’s operating on sheer stupidity and a lack of experience due to the fact he hasn’t kissed anyone in _centuries_ and his mouth has probably stored away that piece of information for never. He still can’t say he regrets it. Not even when Minghao’s shoving away, eyes wide and face flushed.

“Why would you do that?” he demands, and then there’s a flare in his aura and gray barrels in, furious and sad and so many shades of conflicted. “The hell would you _do_ that?”

“I’m sorry.” Even if he’s not. He is.

“You— you’re a fucking _spirit_ ,” Minghao says, “you’re literally leaving in _a few hours_ and I’m going to forget you and god, I still don’t know if you’re real. Is this karmic punishment for something I did? Am I going insane?”

“You’re not…” Jun whispers.

“No, shut up, you don’t get to say. I don’t know if I’m insane but I know I spent half a thousand dollars worth of money and the thirteenth month’s never been talked about anywhere and my mom’s probably calling a mental asylum right now. You’re probably a hallucination. And for some crazy reason I can’t stand the thought of you leaving.”

Jun’s crying now, and tears are maybe the only indication of his lack of humanity, silvery rivers down both his cheeks. “You think it’s easier that you forget me?”

“It’s been four days,” Minghao says numbly. “Not even. This should be easy.”

And still, it’s not. It should be longer. It should be more time. “Minghao…”

“You should just leave right now,” Minghao says, and his voice is so broken, so sad. “Since we’re not seeing each other anyway. Rip off the bandage early, you know?”

Jun nods mutely, but not before he touches Minghao’s earrings, tells him, “I will try my hardest to see you again.” No response. Jun walks out into the night, and it’s cold.

\---

And maybe that should be the end of it. Maybe Jun was stupid to offer the earrings anyway, offer to have a piece of him stay. Maybe he should let Minghao forget about him completely, in peace, and let that be the end of it. He’s obeyed the rules of magic for over a millennium; why should he stop now?

Or maybe he should have been smart enough to realize that even gods can be defied.

Once upon a time, there was a group called the Lisan.

Jun’s magic is powerful. He downplays it, but when he became a spirit, all of his magic, his soul, was condensed into a choker around his neck. He’s not powerful enough to escape the curse cycle forever, but one lifetime there is a possibility of granting. He bargains with the gods of fate and chance. His choker is torn to shreds and blown to the wind. Writings on a wall. A whispered laugh. _Aren’t you a fool_? And Jun may not be able to fight the rules of probability, but he knows the chances of a fair bet.

In the summer, a boy walks into town.

No one is sure where he came from, why he is even here, when there are so many other places in the world he could be. The answers lies everywhere, in earrings and graffiti and people with what others might call an overabundance of dreams, in a tiny ghost town where if you want something you’ve got to make it yourself.

\---

_Junhui, do you believe in yabbays?_

_Ya-whats?_

_Nevermind. Told you it was crazy, Gyu._


	2. Chapter 2

Summers aren’t good when you live in a ghost town.

Soonyoung is all too aware of this. Anyone with common sense and enough money has left on cross-country road trips and overseas planes, dispersing across the world to places with something more than a few rundown stores and cracked roads.

Soonyoung doesn’t have this kind of luxury. It’s the summer after junior year and in another twelve months he’ll be out of this place, but for now, he’s looking at a wide stretch of three months with a low-paying summer job at the local smoothie shop and not much else. It’s understandable, perhaps, why he’s tired.

The sun is overly hot and he’s lying on the dead grass with his face tilted toward the ground, a half-full bottle of lukewarm water next to him. The road in front of him is empty, a winding line of gray, until Kim Mingyu wheels around the corner on a flat-tired bicycle.

He sees Soonyoung and slows to a halt, wheeling the bike up the curb. “Hey,” he says, walking over to where Soonyoung is. “You okay? Did the heat kill you?”

Soonyoung removes his arm from his face and pushes himself up. Kim Mingyu is good-looking and popular, and Soonyoung, despite having known him since the first grade, has never really talked to him. He’s a little bit surprised that Mingyu’s even acknowledging his presence, not just biking past his body on the ground the same way one would ignore a garden gnome or a shrub.

And Soonyoung is rusty at conversation at best, but he’s bored.

“I wish the heat would kill me,” Soonyoung says. “It’d make things more interesting.”

Mingyu laughs, a quiet little puff of sound through his nose. “Understandable.” He folds himself up next to Soonyoung on the grass, pulling his knees to his chest. “So, got any plans for the summer?”

Soonyoung shrugs. “My plans are probably around the same as yours,” he says. “They started and ended with me eating pizza at the end of year bonfire while watching everyone get piss-drunk and leave one by one.”

Mingyu’s eyes curve into crescents. “You paint a dire picture, Kwon Soonyoung.”

Soonyoung’s not going to admit it, but he didn’t think that Mingyu would know his last name. “Just calling it the way I see it. Where are you biking to?”

“You know the gas station two roads down? I’m heading there to get some milk.”

“Exciting.”

He’s been to the gas station before, been everywhere in this place in his past seventeen years. But Mingyu suddenly brightens, standing up.

“Wanna come with? We can get Reese’s Pieces while at it.”

Soonyoung pulls himself off the grass, shaking dirt out of his sandals. Kim Mingyu, asking him to go grocery shopping together. It’s still mundane, but unexpected.

“Unfortunately, I’m too broke for Reese’s Pieces, so that part’s not happening,” Soonyoung says. “But yeah, I’m up for that shit, it’s better than lying on the ground doing nothing. Just let me grab my bike and we can go.”

\---

They wheel their bikes into the abandoned lot of the convenience store, locking them on a nearby post. While Mingyu’s bicycle is at least functional, despite the fact it’s not really built for his stature, Soonyoung’s is falling apart. He had to reconnect the chain twice on the way to the convenience store, and it’s only three blocks down.

“Did you paint that?” Mingyu asks, pointing to the peeling orange streaks on the side of Soonyoung’s bike.

“Yeah, it’s supposed to be fire.” Mingyu opens his mouth, but Soonyoung cuts him off.  “I know it sucks, I did it when I was like, thirteen. Don’t even try and make me feel better.”

Mingyu laughs, brushing his hair out of his eyes. The two of them walk into the convenience store, aisles lined with expired candies and a freezer containing a multitude of bubbly drinks.

There’s a bunch of crates stacked atop one another near the back, and Mingyu manages to trip over his shoelaces and knock over three of them. Soonyoung grimaces. Mingyu lets out a muttered string of curses and starts stacking the fallen crates back up, but then he notices something and stops. “Hey, check out this graffiti.”

Soonyoung does. Words are scrawled on the back wall in Sharpie: _I’ll dance with you on the thirteenth month in the place that only we know. ~ Lilili Yabbay_.

Underneath is haphazard list of random items— Soonyoung catches the words _2+1s_ and _glitter_ and doesn’t even bother reading the rest. “That’s deep,” he says. “I hope this yabbay’s having a better summer than we are.”

Mingyu doesn’t look satisfied with Soonyoung’s flippant comment, taking a picture of the graffiti with his phone and peering closer at the tiles. “Yeah, but what does it _mean_?”

Soonyoung sighs. “I don’t know… maybe it’s the ramblings of a poetic kleptomaniac? I’ve seen weirder shit in the guy's’ bathroom at our high school.”

Mingyu drops it, but Soonyoung catches him taking a pack of 2+1s off their hook before they leave, Mingyu with his carton of milk in hand and a nickel robbed of change. The cashier had looked ready to kill Mingyu when he’d knocked over the crates, and despite the fact Soonyoung had a black belt, those five cents really weren’t worth it.

“Where’s everyone else you know?” Soonyoung asks, because he knows that Mingyu really wouldn’t be hanging out with him if he had his usual friends around. Soonyoung isn’t offended by this fact, not even a little. After all, they don’t talk.

“That’s gonna be a depressing list you’re asking for,” Mingyu says, considering. “Um, let’s see. Joshua’s over in Cali, Wonwoo’s in New York— damn, I think half of the people I hang out with are in America. Joshua will be back in a month, though.”

Soonyoung tilts his head up, squinting at the sun. “Sounds like a riot.”

“I know, right?” Mingyu deadpans. A pause. “...It’s nice that you’re here, though.”

“It’s really not,” Soonyoung says. Mingyu, surprised, tenses in discomfort, staring at the pavement. It’s enough to make Soonyoung feel bad, enough that he tacks on, “Sorry. I knew what you meant.”

Mingyu says nothing to that, and Soonyoung figures he’s messed up. He fidgets with the broken watch on his wrist, hands permanently stuck at 10:10.

He’ll probably be seeing Mingyu around this summer. He finds that he doesn’t mind the thought of being someone else’s consolation prize— he needs someone to talk to, too.

\---

Soonyoung’s mom works in the downtown area, gets up at six in the morning to head over to a low-paying office job via train and gets back around eight at night. There’s an element of guilt on both sides: Soonyoung’s mom, because she’s seeing all of Soonyoung’s friends leave for the summer while her son stays home and preps for a college he might be too broke to go to without scholarship; Soonyoung, because she feels that way.

They sit on the couch and eat microwaved pasta for dinner, Soonyoung with his legs neatly folded up on the upholstery and her slouched against the fabric, the curve of her tiredness blending in with the ugly velvet patterning.

“Anything happen today, Soon?”

Soonyoung swallows a bite. “Actually…” he starts hesitantly. “You know this guy, Kim Mingyu? He goes to my school.”

Her mom frowns, rifling through her mental inventory of _Kim’s_ and people who’s names start with m that Soonyoung may have ever possibly mentioned. “Was he the one that invited you to his birthday party back in fourth grade?”

Soonyoung’s about to say, _I don’t remember_ , but then he _does_. A vague flashback of a Lego movie and blue ice cream cake pan through his mind. “Yeah, that guy! I forgot about that.”

“Glad my memory’s still working,” she says. “What about Kim Mingyu?”

“Nothing much, actually. We just biked down to the convenience store together. His mom was out of milk.”

Christ, that sounds a little sad, like he’s setting her up for this big party and then hands her a deflated balloon instead. But she beams, ruffling his hair. “That’s so nice. I liked Kim Mingyu, he hugged you so hard when you gave him that toy car as a present.”

\---

Soonyoung’s got a summer job over at _Seventeen_ , a small smoothie shop that, contrary to its name, only has thirteen items on the menu. The other guy on his shift is this guy named Minghao; he wears tiny silver moons in both of his ears and an expression as impassive and malleable as water.

“Hi,” someone says, the lone customer in his shop. He’s got soft blonde hair and features, but his eyes are sharp. “One medium Berry Nice.”

Minghao pops his gum listlessly, reaching for a cup. “Name?”

“I’m the only one here.”

“It’s protocol,” Minghao answers, Sharpie poised over the plastic. He looks like he’s exercising all of his self-control not to crush the cup in his hands.

The customer purses his mouth. “1004,” he finally says, and Minghao rolls his eyes but scrawls it down. He heads over to the blender and dumps some ice in, turning it on. It sounds like the grating of rocks.

Soonyoung plays with his apron, itchy black with the logo badly stitched on the front. He decides to talk to self-proclaimed 1004. “What’s your _real_ name?”

“Is this protocol, too?” he snarks. “Do I need to go through some kind of interrogation process to get a smoothie?”

Soonyoung shuts up.

Minghao finishes up with the order and fits the top on, jamming a straw through the hole and sliding it over the counter. The smoothie is a peaceful berry mix, nothing like the cranky atmosphere in the room. 1004 guy takes it with what might be a miniscule nod of thanks, before he walks out the door.

Minghao fiddles with one of his earrings. “I know that guy,” he comments. “He tutored me once. Don’t remember him being such an asshole, though.”

Soonyoung pokes at the buttons on the register, still stinging. “The hell was his deal?”

Minghao’s pops his gum again, taking his phone out of his pocket. “Dunno, not my business. Might have something to do with that kid that moved away in April. Chan, or something. They were tight.”

Actually, now that he thinks about it, that sounds vaguely familiar. Ghost town; everyone knows everyone’s business. Soonyoung’s irritation evaporates— he’s able to relate a little bit too much to 1004. “At least Chan’s out of this place.”

The hard line of Minghao’s mouth softens into a curve. “See, that’s the most important part,” he says, heading over to the back. “Yo, Soonyoung, want some diced pineapple?”

Soonyoung feels like he’s passed some sort of test.

\---

Turns out, Soonyoung’s predictions are right.

He’s lying on the grass reading a comic when Mingyu turns the corner, but Soonyoung pretends he doesn’t see Mingyu until he’s right in front of the driveway. “Hey,” Mingyu says, sitting down on the grass. “What are you reading?”

Soonyoung turns the book over and shows him. It’s pretty good, if generic, starring a high school kid leading a double life as a superhero. He’s gotten mildly invested in the romantic subplot with the popular guy in school, but he’s not going to admit that.

“I just took it off the shelf,” Soonyoung says. “It’s like the seventeenth book or whatever in the series. I’m not really sure what’s actually going on.”

“That’s the only way to read comics,” Mingyu says, and Soonyoung nods in agreement. “Anyway, Soonyoung— remember that graffiti on the convenience store wall?” Wait, he’s still on that? What’s this kid’s deal? “I looked up what a yabbay was.”

He pulls out his phone and tilts the screen toward Soonyoung’s face. The sun reflects off the screen, turning it almost completely black. Soonyoung sighs.

He really doesn’t care, but it’d be harder to fake any semblance of interest if he can’t even see the page without squinting.

Soonyoung stands up, says, “Come inside.”

He walks into his house without another word, and Mingyu silently follows.

The inside of his home is small and messy, his room is sectioned off with a piece of cloth. There’s his bed, SHINee posters from the local Dollar Tree, a couple of trophies from dance competitions. He tells himself not to be self-conscious, Mingyu can judge all he wants, taking a seat on the bed and gesturing for Mingyu to join him. The mattress springs creak under their weight.

“Alright,” Soonyoung says, “so what’s a yabbay?”

Mingyu fiddles with his phone, tapping on a link before passing it onto Soonyoung. The screen is badly cracked, but so is Soonyoung’s, so he’s used to it. He skims the article.

_A yabbay is a wandering spirit with their soul still tethered to the earth. They walk amongst the living every thirteenth month, but the memories of them are erased as soon as they leave. Occasionally, they leave small traces of their presence._

Soonyoung’s got to admit that the article is actually sort of interesting, even if it _is_ an unreliable piece of bullshit. There’s a debate in the comment section over whether yabbays are real, some users claiming they’ve retained the memories, others saying that yabbays are a myth, just like everything else is.

Mingyu says, “I know you don’t really care, Soonyoung.”

Soonyoung looks up, caught out. Mingyu takes his phone back, tucking it into the pocket of his jersey. “I’m sorry,” Soonyoung finally says. “I just— why do _you_?”

Mingyu leans his weight on his elbows, and the bed tilts even more. Soonyoung wants to laugh, almost, because he’s got this ridiculously hot boy in his bed and they’re talking about wandering spirits and store graffiti.

“I don’t know,” Mingyu says. “But… it just. It felt like it meant something.”

Soonyoung doesn’t respond.

“Besides, there’s really nothing else to do over the summer,” Mingyu says. “I just… it’s something to occupy me, I guess? So I’m going to get the stuff the list said.”

And suddenly— it _does_ make sense. He understands.

When Soonyoung was younger, he would pretend that his closet lead to another world and that the notes in the classroom wastebin were the writings of a spy. Over the summer, he collected materials for treehouses despite the fact there were only dead shrubs in front of his house, built a lemonade stand even though he didn’t have anyone to sell the lemonade to. None of it was real, but it didn’t have to be.

“I’ll get the stuff with you, then,” Soonyoung says, and Mingyu beams.  “Ghost scavenger hunt.”

“ _Wandering spirit_.”

“Vampire goose chase. Werewolf bucket list.”

Mingyu hits him on the arm, playful. “Yabbay’s literally two syllables, it’s not that hard to say,” he laughs. “But sure, whatever works. The next thing we’re getting is a ring.”

\---

“A ring,” Soonyoung says, as they head over to the nearby Say Less. “What kind of ring? A wedding ring? A ring pop? Dammit, why is this so vague?”

“I don’t think a ring pop counts,” Mingyu says. He’s wearing shades, but they probably don’t work very well, since he’s still using his hand to shield him from the sun. “And you don’t get wedding rings from the dollar tree. So just a regular one, then.”

“What else is on that list?” Soonyoung asks curiously. “I just remember that, and like, glitter. Could we get glitter in the store, too?”

Mingyu wipes sweat off his neck, says, “We could probably tick off maybe... four of the items today. Some of the other items on the list are a little bit strange.”

“...Oh god.”

Mingyu immediately catches his drift. “Not _that_ kind of strange!”  

“Just checking,” Soonyoung says. “What kind of strange, then?”

“I think Chinese love song was on there. And piano. And moon.” With every item Mingyu lists, his voice gets more and more uncertain.  

Soonyoung lifts an eyebrow. “Right, because we’re supposed to just be able to get the moon. That’s normal. I buy that when I go grocery shopping all the time.”

Mingyu looks faintly embarrassed. “You know what, we can figure that one out when we get there,” he says. “Let’s just go get the ring and glitter and stuff.”

Soonyoung rolls his eyes, following Mingyu into the store. Mingyu’s wearing this muscle tank that leaves his tan lines on full display, and Soonyoung can’t stop looking at them. It’s just, the difference in skin tone is so large. Which is amusing. And also Mingyu’s biceps are nice, but that’s definitely not the focal point here.

Mingyu’s estimation is spot-on— they’re able to buy exactly four things: the ring and the glitter, and an alarm clock and a novel. The store is nowhere near high quality, and Soonyoung and Mingyu are both under budget, so everything they buy is plastic and cheap and rather disappointing.

“I don’t even fully believe in yabbays but I apologize to them,” Soonyoung says, plastic bag dangling from his wrist. “They deserve better than this crap.”

Mingyu looks mournfully at the paperback he’s holding, the cover depicting a shirtless man holding a women clad in silk. “Why was everything in the book aisle either hardcore erotica or picture book? That’s not a marketable combination.”

“Yes, because _clearly_ that store is the pinnacle of good economical decision,” Soonyoung groans. The bag bangs against his leg, containing a tube of silvery glitter and an ring with chipping pink beads. “That cashier was so confused.”

“Yeah, I think she would’ve been less judgemental if we’d just bought straight up condoms or something,” Mingyu says. “I mean, not that I would. I wouldn’t trust this place with that kind of stuff.”

This, at least, Soonyoung can agree to. “Same.”

\---

Two days later, Soonyoung in half a daydream during his shift, thinking about the four remaining items on the list and messy black hair. Minghao pokes him, and Soonyoung jolts. “I mean, same,” Minghao mutters. “But someone just came in.”

It’s that guy from before. 1004.

“Hey,” Soonyoung says, picking up a cup. “Medium Berry Nice, again? On the house.”

Minghao whips his head around, and Soonyoung nearly chokes on his own spit. Where’d that come from? He’s going to have to pay for it himself. 1004’s eyes narrow, and Soonyoung can see a split second of gratitude before his face closes over into something confused and suspicious. “...Why?”

“You didn’t give me your _name_ last time. I don’t need to give you my reasons.”

The guy doesn’t flinch, just stays silent for a moment like he’s weighing his decision. “I’m Jeonghan.”

Soonyoung scrawls it on the cup, heading over to the blender to make the Berry Nice. He can feel Minghao watching him. Soonyoung puts the cup down on the counter, and Jeonghan doesn’t leave the shop this time around, opts to sit at one of the tables instead, fiddling with his phone while drinking his smoothie.

“Was that you trying to be nice?” Minghao mutters to him.

“Berry nice,” Soonyoung says sarcastically.

Minghao chokes in surprise, a laugh snuffed out before it can properly get out of his throat. It makes Soonyoung feel validated anyway.

\---

“Can I draw on your arm?” Minghao asks the next shift, brandishing the issued Sharpie.

Soonyoung considers this, shrugs. “Why _not_?” He starts to extend his arm out, but then says, “Wait— you’re not going to like, draw a dick or anything, right?”

Minghao looks disgusted. “That’s so fucking generic, why would I do that.” He places the tip of the Sharpie on Soonyoung’s skin; Soonyoung can’t really see what Minghao’s drawing, something swirly. The tight line of Minghao’s mouth softens with his head bent down, no one there to see what he’s really thinking.

At this precise moment, the door to _Seventeen_ swings open. Minghao drops Soonyoung’s arm, and Soonyoung takes a moment to look at the design, what looks like two people connected by a string. Mingyu walks in, shirt sticking to his skin and hair plastered to his forehead.

It’s not actually that much of a coincidence— there’s not many places in this town to visit, but he’s surprised to see Mingyu nonetheless. “Hi, Mingyu.”

“Oh, hey,” Mingyu says to Soonyoung. “I didn’t know you worked here.”

“It’s a summer job.” The rest of the year, Soonyoung works at a local clothing store, folding shirts and catering to customers who want it ‘size and a half.’ It’s harder to slack off there, but it kept him occupied, at least.

“And Minghao,” Mingyu says. “Didn’t know you worked here, either.”  

Minghao pops his gum disinterestedly. “Well, I do.”

Soonyoung pulls at the strings of his apron. “Where’d you two know each other from?”

Minghao snorts. “There’s only one high school in this place,” he says. He’s got a point there; Soonyoung’s just apt to keep his head down, so he doesn’t know a lot of people. With a start, Soonyoung realizes that he and Minghao both must go to Pledis High— how has that never occurred to him before? “Mingyu and I were in the same gym class.”

“Minghao threw really hard in dodgeball, it was great,” Mingyu adds. “He gave me a bloody nose, once.”

Minghao looks faintly pleased at this.

Soonyoung pulls out one of the plastic cups, a strange and ugly feeling in him at watching Minghao and Mingyu interact, scrawling down Mingyu’s name. “Order?”

“Um…” Mingyu says, staring hard at the menu behind them.

“There’s literally thirteen menu items, it’s not that difficult,” Minghao snaps.  

“I don’t get to have these often,” Mingyu defends. “But one Fruitiful, thank you. Do I get a discount because I know you guys?”

“No,” Soonyoung and Minghao say simultaneously, although Soonyoung keys his order in with a nickel taken off, to make up for that one time at the store.

Mingyu flashes a blinding smile when he gets his smoothie and walks out the door. Soonyoung picks at his nails, the quiet hum of ventilation again the only sound in the smoothie shop. Minghao takes his arm and continues drawing. Soonyoung was right; it’s two people connected by a thread. Soonyoung wonders if Minghao’s getting over an ex or something, but then again, Minghao is too cool for heartbreak.

“So,” Minghao asks, when he’s done. “What’s _your_ affiliation with Kim Mingyu?”

“I’m his friend for the summer,” Soonyoung says. “We’re going on a scavenger hunt because of some store graffiti. Normal stuff.”

Minghao’s brows shoot up. “...Alright then.”

\---

“What else is on the list?” Soonyoung asks Mingyu, sprawled out on Soonyoung’s front lawn. Mingyu’s come over to the smoothie shop two times after that first one; he doesn’t buy anything, but they let him stay anyway. They all know what it’s like not to have pocket money, and the manager’s never there.

“Four more,” Mingyu reports idly. It’s particularly hot today, and he’s not wearing a shirt. Soonyoung would do that too, but he feels a little bit inadequate compared to Mingyu’s rock hard abs and lean muscle, so he keeps it on. “A black belt, a piano, a Chinese love song, and a moon.” He’s got them memorized at this point.

Huh. There are words on the tip of Soonyoung’s tongue; he’s not sure if he wants to say them, though. They’ve only spent around five dollars on this yabbay mission so far, and none of the items had any value. But—

“I have a black belt in my house,” he finally says. “I used to take taekwondo.”

“Really?” Mingyu says excitedly. And then: “So like— you could take me down?”

“Why’s _that_ the first question you ask?” Soonyoung mutters. And the answer is that he probably could but he doesn’t want to, doesn’t want to touch the planes of Mingyu’s hard chest and broad shoulders in the context of a fight. “I guess I could, yeah.”

“That’s so cool.”

“The skill’s not really useful in this neighborhood,” Soonyoung says. “Last time someone tried to mug me I only had an empty Starburst wrapper in my pocket.”

Mingyu laughs. “Relate... so, then, are you offering to donate your black belt for the sake of the cause?”  

“Don’t call it the cause,” Soonyoung snaps, regretting it when Mingyu’s face cracks a little in surprised hurt. He softens his voice. “But the belt’s probably gathering dust in a cardboard box somewhere right now, so yeah, I wouldn’t mind.”

Mingyu beams. “Let’s go get it?” He’s already walking toward Soonyoung’s house.

Soonyoung catches up, warning, “There might be spiders.”

Mingyu shudders but straightens up his shoulders a moment after. “That’s fine, I’m willing to risk it,” he says, face creasing in exaggerated determination.

It’s kind of cute, but Soonyoung tells that thought to go away.

They walk over to the back corner of Soonyoung’s house, filled with at least seventeen cardboard boxes. Soonyoung sighs and opens the first one. It’s filled with shoes and clothing from when he was younger, the fabric worn and soft. Soonyoung hasn’t really gone through any of these before; it smells like dust and past dreams and fathers before they disappeared out of town into better parts of the world.

“Am I allowed to just start looking…?” Mingyu asks hesitantly.

“It’s literally just broken toys and kid junk, go ahead,” Soonyoung says. Mingyu nods and sits down cross-legged on the floor and pulls one of the cardboard boxes toward him, opening the top. Soonyoung kneels down and does the same.

“Oh,” Mingyu says, pulling out a photograph. “Is this you?”

Soonyoung tips forward onto his elbows and looks at what Mingyu’s holding. It’s him from about four years ago, arms around another boy, both of them grinning. Soonyoung hasn’t smiled like that in a long time, the kind of smile that smushed his cheeks up and pronounced the ten-ten shape of his eyes. He hasn’t seen Seungkwan in a long time, either.

“Yeah, that’s me,” Soonyoung says shortly. “The other dude’s my best friend from when I was younger, named Seungkwan. He moved away two years ago.”

Back in freshman year he and Seungkwan swore loudly that they’d make it out of this hell someday; Soonyoung would be a dancer and Seungkwan would be a singer. And then he left. Soonyoung tries not to think about it as leaving, because it’s not like Seungkwan had a choice, and it’s not like Soonyoung is resentful.

They still text. But it’s slightly awkward, the two not sure where they stand anymore. This summer, Seungkwan is probably going out to Times Square, holding hands with his boyfriend (this guy named Vernon that Soonyoung can _definitely_ see the appeal to.) And Soonyoung— he doesn’t even know what he’s doing, at this point.

“Ah,” Mingyu says, lamely. Soonyoung feels a sudden wave of tiredness crash over him, but he continues rifling through the boxes, finding the black belt in the fifth one.

“Here it is,” he says softly. “My black belt.” And then something occurs to him. “Wait— what if the list didn’t even mean black belt as in martial arts? What if it just…”

Mingyu grimaces. “Oh, shit, you mean like a normal black belt?” Soonyoung nods. “Um, then I can give this back to you, if you want, I can just take my dad’s—”

But Soonyoung gets this feeling. It’s a feeling that’s deeply unsettling in the way that it doesn’t even feel like it’s his, but he gets the sense that the list _had_ meant what they thought it meant. It’s eerie. Soonyoung doesn’t like it, to say the least, but all he says is, “We went through all this trouble to get it. Might as well use it.”

“Alright,” Mingyu says. “I’ll put it in the pile, then.”

\---

For some reason, it gives Soonyoung satisfaction to see him, Minghao, Mingyu, and Jeonghan all in the same place. It was bound to happen at some point in the summer, what with all of them frequenting the same smoothie shop, but the current situation: Minghao crunching ice, Soonyoung counting change, Mingyu leaning against the counter, and Jeonghan sitting at a table, feels like the neat intersection of four different trajectories on the same plane.

“Here you go,” Minghao says, handing the smoothie over. “One _Can’t See the Blend_.”

“Thank you,” Mingyu says, his attention snagging mid-sip. “Oh, hey, nice earrings.” The silver moon-shaped studs glint in Minghao’s earlobes, catching the light. “I’ve been wanting to get my ears pierced. Did it hurt?”

Minghao shrugs. “I wouldn’t know, I just jammed a needle through them and got it over with.” Mingyu winces at the words alone.

“I doubt that shady salon two streets over would do much better,” Soonyoung comments, and Minghao double-points to Soonyoung like, _see, he gets it._

Mingyu heaves a sigh, slumping against the counter. “And all the earrings I’ve seen look like they should go back to the plastic factory where they came from. That’s what I mean, Minghao. Yours look legit.”

“They were a gift from— a friend,” Minghao says, sounding cautious. He turns away, and when he turns back, it’s like he’s completely different. “How’s your guys’s summer bucket list going, anyway?”

Mingyu looks surprised, and Soonyoung realizes that Mingyu doesn’t know that Soonyoung’s told Minghao about their operation. And it wasn’t even the full version, a chopped up summary of it.

“Um, it’s going, I guess,” Mingyu says. And then— “Hey, Minghao, would you happen to have any Chinese love songs, by the way?”

Soonyoung internally stabs himself.

Minghao bumps into the register in surprise. “Wh— what,” he stammers. “The kind of weird as fuck bucket list are you two even _doing_?”

Mingyu shrugs. “Doesn’t matter. You got them or no?”

Minghao raises an eyebrow in response to that but pulls his phone out of his backpack, unlocking it and scrolling through his apps to his playlist.

“Does this work?” Minghao asks slowly, like he’s fearing for Mingyu’s sanity.

Mingyu shakes his head, and Minghao scowls and violently jams his phone back into his pocket. “We need a hard copy,” Mingyu amends. “Sorry.” He turns to Soonyoung, saying, “It’s fine. We can look up the nearest record store.”

At this moment, Jeonghan puts down his smoothie and joins them. “What’s got you guys all fired up?” he drawls, at where Minghao looks like he’s about to combust, Soonyoung’s got his palm to his face, and Mingyu’s frantically trying to figure out how to operate the shitty GPS on his phone. His GPS probably doesn’t even know about this town. It’s one of those quiet reminders as to how depressing the place is.

“This guy,” Minghao says, jerking his thumb toward Mingyu, “apparently needs a Chinese love song. Specifically a _hard copy_ of one, can’t just pirate it illegally online like everyone else does. I don’t know why, and I don’t _want_ to know why.”

“Dammit,” Mingyu says, finally having figured out his phone, “the nearest record store is like, in the city. Which is far from here.”

Jeonghan tilts his head, thinking, then says, “I could drive you guys, if you want.”

Mingyu drops his phone. It clatters to the ground, and Soonyoung starts to understand how all those cracks got on there. Fortunately, the smoothie is safely on the counter, so it doesn’t suffer the same fate. “You— what?”

Jeonghan shrugs, looking like some kind of manipulative angel. Soonyoung really can’t figure him out. “I’ve got nothing better to do this afternoon,” he says carelessly. “Take the offer or leave it.”

“We’ll take it,” Soonyoung blurts out. Maybe Jeonghan’s going to kill them all in the car— really, at this point, Soonyoung doesn’t care. It’s a free ride. “Hey, Minghao, you wanna come along?”

Minghao takes a split-second to process it but then says, “Well, yeah, sure. Any excuse to get out of this place.”

Five minutes later they all pile into Jeonghan’s car, and Jeonghan revs up the engine. And for a second Soonyoung lets himself pretend that they’re four friends going on a road trip for the summer, potato chips in the back trunk and a map full of pushpin holes taped to the window, sleeping over at motels and buying Pepsi from gas stations.

Maybe in this world, Mingyu has his thigh against Soonyoung’s, arm resting against his shoulder, their fingers intertwined. This is when Soonyoung makes the illusion dissipate, until they’re just four guys sitting in the same vehicle taking an intermission from nowhere.

Minghao puts his head against the window, Jeonghan changing the radio to some obscure station Mingyu’s never listened to. “Did the creator of this town purposely decide to build it in the most remote place possible,” Minghao mutters. “There’s just dirt.”

“And sky,” Soonyoung adds. “Don’t forget the sky.”

“And the random half-assed tree ever few meters,” Jeonghan says, eyes affixed to the road, empty smoothie cup in hand. “Alright, fifteen minutes left until we join the rest of humanity.”

“Excellent,” Mingyu says. “I have to pee.”

Minghao looks disgusted. Soonyoung kind of relates, but he has to pee too.

\---

It’s actually half an hour before Jeonghan wheels off the highway into another town; his driving skills are terrible, and he gets honked at no less than seventeen times over the course of attempting to park. Mingyu and Soonyoung head into the bathroom at a fast-food shop before the four of them regroup on the sidewalk of the street.

“Alright,” Jeonghan says, “We got eight hours to screw around before the parking meter runs out, so what kind of shit you guys wanna do?”

“Eight hours?” Mingyu says, amazed. Jeonghan shrugs. Soonyoung shades his eyes, squinting as the sunlight bounces against glass windows and cars. It’s so hot out.

Mingyu gets out his wallet, pulling out crumpled bills and a few coins. “I have, like, fifteen dollars max,” he sighs, counting. “I literally can’t afford anything in this place.”

He’s loud and a man walking past them shoots him a glare. Mingyu doesn’t notice, but Soonyoung does, and sends a sickly-sweet smile back in return. “We can browse,” Soonyoung says. “Piss off all the store owners by walking in and not buying anything.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Minghao says, looking up from his phone. He tilts the screen toward them. “Check it out, dude, an actual busy street.”

“That's good photography,” Mingyu comments, impressed.

Minghao shrugs, but Soonyoung can tell he’s pleased.

The four of them go into the high-end clothing stores and take turns mocking the zeroes on the price tags— “I think that shirt costs more than my entire existence,” Minghao says. “It’s not even a good shirt…” — and at one point Jeonghan is coerced into trying out a sparkly headband. He actually pulls it off pretty well.

At the end of the street there’s a shop called Highlight tucked into the corner, and when Soonyoung walks in he can tell it’s not the kind of shop that belongs on this street. It’s dusty and the clothing is all secondhand, spread out on racks with the colors all over the place. Soonyoung picks up a bracelet and slides it on his wrist. It’s made of four strings in yellow and blue and tan and black and for some reason, Soonyoung wants it.

Mingyu catches him staring at it and gently turns Soonyoung’s wrist so that it’s facing him. The warm press of Mingyu’s fingers on his skin catches him off guard, and for a second his breath hitches, until he realizes belatedly that Mingyu’s only checking the price tag.

“It looks good on you,” Mingyu offhandedly says. “And it’s only two dollars…”

Soonyoung smacks him on the arm, trying to cover up how unsteady he suddenly is. “You’re basically as broke as I am, don’t be stupid.”

Mingyu tilts his head. “You never ask for anything, though.”

“It’s just a pile of string,” Soonyoung says, and slides it back into the bin. Mingyu’s presence next to him is suddenly too warm, too solid, so he weaves his way through the mess of clothes to where Minghao and Jeonghan are standing near a hat rack.

“Hey,” Jeonghan says.

Minghao dips his chin to acknowledge Soonyoung’s presence and rifles through the hats. His face lights up a minute later and Soonyoung double takes as to what; Minghao has pulled out this floppy plaid bucket hat, and Soonyoung doesn’t know anything about fashion, but he has _questions_.

“I’m concerned,” Jeonghan says, voicing Soonyoung’s thoughts. “Are you going to buy that?”

Minghao checks the price tag and fits it over his head, brim falling over his eyes. “Absolutely. You got a problem?”

“You— aren’t you in a fashion elective?”

“Yes.”

“And you’re buying a plaid bucket hat. _While_ wearing a striped t-shirt.”

Minghao lifts the brim up and glares. “You can shut the fuck up about my fashion choices,” he says. “Let me and my hat live.”

Mingyu comes over at that moment and Soonyoung mimes zipping his lips, to which Mingyu is completely oblivious to. “That hat is a crime against humanity,” he says, and Soonyoung just sighs when Minghao nearly kills him right in the middle of the store.

\---

They head over to the record store sometime late-afternoon, Minghao in his hat that no one dares to mention and Mingyu and Jeonghan passing back and forth a cheap plastic cup of sorbet that they’d bought from a nearby street vendor.

At one point, Mingyu sticks an elbow into Soonyoung’s side and asks, “Want some?” Soonyoung nods, but doesn’t expect it when Mingyu nudges the spoon against his mouth. The ice falls to the sidewalk.

Soonyoung thinks he can see Minghao rolling his eyes.

The record shop’s got air conditioning that raises goosebumps on Soonyoung’s arm, shelves filled with CDs and band merchandise. The speakers are playing some kind of pop music that Jeonghan hums the lyrics to under his breath. “Alright,” Minghao says. “Let’s look.”

Soonyoung’s never been in a record shop before so he doesn’t start searching in earnest for a while, instead poking around a bit for anything that catches his interest. Minghao picks up a CD, the cover hip-hop and dark, glancing at it with mild interest before setting it back down.

“Guys,” Jeonghan says. “I think I found it.”

Soonyoung walks over to where Jeonghan’s crouched over a rack of CDs. “Wow,” Soonyoung comments. “That’s a lot of Chinese love song.”

“It’s surprisingly a very popular niche category,” Jeonghan says. He picks up a CD at random, the cover depicting a girl and a guy. “I mean, I can’t understand any of the words, but this looks like it works.”

“Lemme see,” Minghao says. He takes a look and scrunches up his face. “Hell no, that artist’s trash. Put it down.”

“I mean, you’d know better than we do,” Soonyoung says, stepping back and letting Minghao sift through the pile. He stops at around the dozenth one and pulls it out, hoisting himself back up.

“I like this one.” The picture is surprisingly serene, a vivid orange forest carved through with a dirt path. “The lyrics are good.”

“Yep, because I can understand them,” Soonyoung says, straight-faced.

Mingyu pays for the CD and they pool their remaining money to get sandwiches before they climb back into Jeonghan’s car and wheel onto the highway. Soonyoung’s still hungry, but he doesn’t care. He stares out the window and watches the city roll past them, glass windowed buildings and storefronts with their names written on them in neon letters.

The sky is a darker shade of blue by the time they get back, horizons streaked with pink. Soonyoung and Mingyu, back at their rundown neighborhood, slowly walk toward their respective houses. “That was cool,” Mingyu says, at the intersection they diverge. He takes Soonyoung’s hand and drops something in it. Mingyu needs to stop touching him with no warning.

Soonyoung stares. It’s the bracelet he’d been eying back at Highlight. “Thank you,” he says slowly, sliding it on his wrist. His chest feels like an inflated balloon. “But I’ll pay you back.”

Mingyu shakes his head, staring serenely at the sky. “No, you won’t.”

\---

Four days later, Mingyu and Soonyoung are sitting on the curb in front of Mingyu’s house, feet stretched out on the dusty cement road.

“I was thinking,” Mingyu says. “About the list.”

Soonyoung’s got his elbows on the grass, daydreaming about blue popsicles. “Hmm? Oh, yeah. What’s next on it?”

“A piano and a moon,” Mingyu ticks off automatically, then adds, “but I was thinking about how we would get any of those things and I realized… we really can’t? So if you want, maybe we could just stop here.”

“No,” Soonyoung blurts out. “Just, no.”

He can’t explain it. Because he doesn’t believe in yabbays and could care less about the outcome of the list, but he’s come to think about the summer spaced out in items, smoothie shifts in between. He doesn’t know what the context of him and Mingyu is without it. Not completing it seems— wrong.

Mingyu’s eyebrows furrow. “Are you sure? You don’t need to…”

“We bought a tube of My Little Pony glitter and drove to another city to get a love song,” Soonyoung says. “Don’t tell me you’re backing out now.”

Mingyu smiles and Soonyoung is warm. “Okay, I’ll keep trying to figure something out.”

\---

There’s rain rolling down the window panes, puddles forming in the potholes of the roads and wet wind blowing against the door. Soonyoung slumps against the counter of _Seventeen_ and pretends there are M&Ms flying through his head.

“Hey,” Minghao says, and Soonyoung stops with the imaginary M&Ms. “I guess we should close up now, since the storm’s getting pretty bad.”

“That makes sense,” Soonyoung says. “The manager won’t mind?”

Minghao snorts. “He doesn’t know shit. He would’ve hired you even if you didn’t know how to operate a blender.” This is true, so Soonyoung flips the sign on the door and starts cleaning up, not that there was much of a mess to begin with.

Minghao asks, “Is Mingyu your boyfriend, or nah?”

Soonyoung nearly drops an entire canister of fruit on his foot. “ _No_.”  

Minghao shrugs, “Thought so, just verifying.” Soonyoung tells himself that Minghao’s disinterest on the whole subject should be relieving, but there’s a tiny piece of him that feels a little offended. _What do you mean, thought so_?

“Also, we had math class together last year,” Minghao says idly. “Just so you know.”

Soonyoung’s face burns. He’s not good at math, had spent the entire year sitting in the back and keeping his head down. “I kept my head down the whole time,” he says. “Sorry I didn’t remember you.”

“Oh, no, I didn’t remember you either,” Minghao assures him. “I was just deleting old group chats from my phone yesterday and I saw you were in the class one.”

Now that Minghao mentions it, Soonyoung remembers that chat from last September. He’d checked it maybe once or twice a month, never really finding anything worth responding to. “Didn’t that one kid crash it by spamming it with too many communist memes?” Soonyoung asks. “I should leave it, too.”

Minghao hums. “That’s probably the best course of action.”

He leans against the counter, and Soonyoung puts down the washcloth and joins him. For a second Soonyoung just watches the rain pour down the glass, until he realizes Minghao’s asking him a question. “Are you good at it? Math?”

Soonyoung “God, no, I understood nothing. Mr. Moon might as well been writing Latin on the board for all I knew…”

“I’m pretty good at it, so I can help you if you need it,” Minghao offers. He looks down after that, like he’s embarrassed over the admittance that he himself is good and that he wants to use it to help _Soonyoung_ of all people. And— Soonyoung is grateful.

“That’d be awesome, thank you,” he says.

Minghao shrugs, still not looking at him, pulling off his uniform and hanging it neatly on the hook. He actually brought an umbrella for the rain, unlike Soonyoung. “Stay safe in the storm,” Soonyoung says, with a small wave.

“Says the one without an umbrella,” Minghao snorts. “You okay on your own?”

Soonyoung calculates the distance between the smoothie shop and his house. “I’ll be fine, I live pretty close to here,” he says. He steps outside, rain rolling down his face, shirt wet in an instant.

He sprints off the curb, and Minghao yells, “Run, Soonyoung!” Soonyoung sends Minghao a wave and a thumbs up, wet sneakers slapping against the sidewalk, hair plastered to his face. He’s going to regret this later, but he could care less at the moment, rain cool silver against his skin.

\---

A few days later, Mingyu shows up to his house hauling what looks like an entire wagonload of construction materials. The pieces immediately snap together. “Are you fucking with me?” Soonyoung asks, half-laughing. “Are we going to build a piano?”

“Absolutely,” Mingyu says, jogging onto the driveway. “It’s going to be absolute crap, and then we can post it up on Instagram with a bunch of crying emojis.”

“I don’t have an Instagram.”

“Well, that’s an issue,” Mingyu says. “You need to make one so you can follow me.”

Soonyoung actually used to have an Instagram, but deleted it after he didn’t use it for a month. And it’s not like Mingyu’s actually going to tag him in his selfies or dm him during the school year, so there’s really no point. Soonyoung’s account would literally just be an empty bio. Yet, he considers making one anyway. He’s a masochist.

Soonyoung says, “So we’re going to build a piano. We’re _actually_ doing this.”

“Are you questioning my DIY skills, Kwon Soonyoung?” Mingyu jokingly demands, before adding, “It’s just going to be a mini one, anyway. I looked up some tutorials for it on Youtube. Google’s reccing me dollhouse construction vids now because of it.”

Soonyoung smiles weakly. “Do we even have half the necessary materials?”

“... No,” Mingyu says. “Plywood and clay and acrylic are expensive. I have cardboard and cheap paint. It’ll be fine, we can modify it and like, experiment as we go.”

And maybe Soonyoung is more excited than he’d like to admit, because back in elementary school he was the first in line to go to art class, to build misshapen clay sculptures and put together boxes out of popsicles sticks. He doesn’t do art anymore, but it’s not because he doesn’t like it. It’s because he’s not good at it, and it won’t look good on college applications. He still likes it. He never stopped liking it.

“Alright, then, let’s do this then,” Soonyoung says. Mingyu beams, and it’s like another sun. “We should put some newspaper on the floor, though, my house is a mess but my mom draws the line at paint.”

Mingyu finds the bin where they keep old newspapers and spreads them out, and then he and Mingyu hunch over Soonyoung’s phone, rewatching the tutorial, occasionally commenting stuff like, “Where the hell’d she get this stuff?” “We could probably pull that part off…” and Mingyu gets to work drawing lines on cardboard.

“Watch as I stab myself with the scissors,” Soonyoung says, idly tracing the blade.

“Don’t get blood on the piano. I’m fairly certain the yabbay would not appreciate that.”

Soonyoung pouts. Mingyu’s doing most of the work here, and Soonyoung feels like some kind of incompetent assistant, occasionally rewinding the video when Mingyu asks how a certain part went again and handing him materials.

The youtuber makes it look easy. It is not.

\---

At eight PM, Soonyoung’s mom comes home to find the both of them sprawled out on the floor, surrounded by cardboard scraps. Mingyu is painstakingly glueing two pieces together, Soonyoung trying to hold the contraption at an exact ninety degree angle.

Mingyu is so focused that he doesn’t notice the door opening until Soonyoung’s mom calls, “Soonyoung, there was a sale at Smile Flour today so I brought pizza for dinner—”

Mingyu drops the glue bottle, accidentally squeezing it in the process, and Soonyoung wipes a stray splatter from his pants. “Hi, Mrs. Kwon,” Mingyu says. “I’m Mingyu, Soonyoung’s friend from school.”

“Oh, Mingyu, it’s so nice to meet you,” she says, beaming.

Soonyoung is terrified. He can see her basically adopting Mingyu already, Mingyu with his tan skin and bright smile and oblivious handsomeness poorly concealed by thrift-shop clothes, the one Soonyoung had mentioned at the beginning of summer. 

It must be nice for her to see him actually hanging out with someone. Relieving. During the year, Soonyoung is bitter and withdrawn and studious; the only people he even considers friends are Jihoon and Seungcheol. (And Seungkwan, but he isn’t here.) Jihoon is even more isolated than he is and Seungcheol’s schedule is stuffed full. At this point, Soonyoung’s mom is probably concerned that he doesn’t have any friends.

Mingyu isn’t going to be around when school starts, though; they’ll drift off to their respective social circles, or in Soonyoung’s case, lack of. He pushes the thought away.  

“Sorry, I didn’t realize how late it’d gotten,” Mingyu says apologetically. “I can leave.”

“No no, you’re very welcome to stay for dinner,” Soonyoung’s mom says, and Soonyoung gets a vivid flashback to that one scene in _Mulan_ : _Would you like to stay forever?_ “It’s a big pizza.”

Mingyu’s eyes crinkle. “Pizza is good.”

“What are you boys doing anyway?” she asks, dropping her bag off and going to the kitchen to distribute slices onto paper plates. “If you don’t mind me asking?”

“We’re making a piano, mom,” Soonyoung says. “I mean, not a real one, we don’t have enough cardboard. A tiny one. For, um, a project.”

“I’ll leave you guys to it, then.” She walks off, and Soonyoung goes to get two plates for him and Mingyu, handing one off. Smile Flour’s pizza is thick and doughy and the cheese texture is mediocre at best, but Soonyoung likes the stuff. So does Mingyu, if the speed at which he eats is any indication.

“I like your mom, she’s cool,” Mingyu says, between mouthfuls.

That doesn’t even cover it. “Yeah, she is.”

Mingyu finishes his pizza and starts painting keys onto the cardboard, squinting at a google image that Soonyoung’s got pulled up on his phone for reference.

“Why are there so _many_ of them,” Mingyu groans. “Like, eighty-eight? Isn’t that overkill?” Soonyoung thinks that it’s lucky Jihoon’s not around to hear that comment. He’d probably smack him with said piano or some other musical instrument.

“Believe it or not, musicians actually like having sounds to work with.”

“You’re not the one painting this thing,” Mingyu grumbles, cursing as he smears a key. “You don’t get to say anything.”

“I’d do a way worse job than you,” Soonyoung says. “Like, if I had to paint that, there wouldn’t even _be_ any keys. The whole thing would just be gray.”

Mingyu snorts, and Soonyoung leans back on his hands and stares out the window, the sky dark blue. “You might want to leave now,” Soonyoung comments. “It’s getting dark. Prime time for mugging, you know.”

“By what, ghosts? There’s no one in this place.” Mingyu snorts. He finishes painting another octave.

“Considering you believe in yabbays, why not.”

Mingyu looks alarmed, covering the piano and looking around the room. “Don’t just _say_ that,” he hisses, like an offended yabbay might break its soul-tether or whatever to go and murder them. “I could just— stay for the night, then, maybe? So we can finish this. If that’s cool with you and your mom.”

“I’m pretty sure my mom would be cool with you living here, so that’s not a problem,” Soonyoung says dryly. “And it’s fine with me. I can sleep on the fold out.”

“I can take the fold out—”

“You’re sleeping on the bed or else I’ll be killed the next morning for being rude to a guest.” Mingyu snaps his mouth shut at that.

 _Or we could both take the bed_ , Soonyoung’s mind supplies, partially out of logic and partially out of— whatever. He tells it to shut up; it’ll be the end of him if Soonyoung’s mom thinks Mingyu’s more than just friend material.

Especially because Mingyu totally _is_.

\---

It’s around midnight when the piano is complete, a little lopsided and smeared but definitely identifiable as a piano. Mingyu gets up and stretches, shirt riding up to show a strip of tanned skin. Soonyoung averts his eyes, staring at the miniature instrument.

It’s quiet in the house. His mom had gone to bed a long time ago, worn out from long hours. Soonyoung is careful not to be too loud as he folds up newspapers and deposits them in the bin, to be used again if needed.

Mingyu’s zoned out when Soonyoung comes back, sitting cross-legged on the ground. Soonyoung says, “You’re actually really good at building stuff, you know?”

“Well, that’s useful,” Mingyu says back. Both of their voices sound louder than normal in the prominent silence. “Since I want to go into engineering.”

It’s another piece of information slipped into the _Kim Mingyu_ mental folder. Soonyoung thinks that at this point he shouldn’t be surprised; of course Mingyu wants to get out of this town as much as he does. What, does Soonyoung think he’ll just be a popular boy at a middle-of-nowhere high school forever?

“You could put making a mini piano out of cardboard on your college apps,” Soonyoung idly suggests.

“Maybe I will,” Mingyu says, smiling. “I’m sure they’d love that.”

The two of them fall silent for a few minutes, Soonyoung stifling yawns, before Mingyu offers, “You look kind of tired. We could turn out for the night if you want.”

He and Soonyoung silently climb into their respective sleeping stations, Mingyu on the bed and Soonyoung on the foldout. Soonyoung locks his arms over his chest, bends his legs so that they’re flopped over the side, and tries to fall asleep.

\---

He wakes up with his eyes crusted over and his head feeling like it’s been stuffed with cotton. Like an alcoholic hangover, except it’s because of mental exhaustion. Kim Mingyu is like that, a video game that keeps you up at night with no regrets.

Soonyoung takes the piano off where its little shelf, where its been left out for the paint to dry overnight. Mingyu had said he’d paint over some of the smears and pronounce the distinction between keys in the morning. Mingyu’s still asleep, though— the sun’s barely out, yet. Soonyoung’s just never been able to sleep well when others were over.

After Mingyu touches up the piano it’ll just be a moon they have to obtain. Soonyoung doesn’t know what’ll happen after that.

He’s kind of dreading it but at the same time… he wishes it were already over. To rip off the bandaid, and to prove that the whole yabbay thing’s a scam.

How does one get the moon, anyway? Can it be torn out of the skies? Is it a secret menu item at Starbucks? You can get anything at Starbucks. But despite the fact it’s a national franchise, their town doesn’t have one, so it’s not a viable option here.

\---

The answer to getting the moon, in the end, is simple.

They’re in _Seventeen_ , which is, as always, pretty much empty. Mingyu’s wearing one of the spare uniforms, sitting up on the counter with him and Minghao. Jeonghan’s at one of the tables, furiously scribbling what looks like an essay on a piece of paper. Soonyoung thinks it’s probably best not to interrupt him.

“Hey, Minghao,” Mingyu says, not so surreptitiously sneaking banana slices into his mouth every few seconds. “How would you go about getting the moon?”

Minghao raises an eyebrow. “You guys planning to steal it? Didn't the dude in Despicable Me already do that?”

“I don't have a shrink ray, or an army of minions, for another. So we can't go that route.”

“Wait…” Minghao says suspiciously, “Is this about that fucking bucket list thing again?”

Mingyu guiltily shrugs. “... Possibly.”

Soonyoung looks away. Minghao just sighs and leans over the counter, saying, “Alright, I really didn't want to ask this, but what the hell are you two doing, anyway?”

Soonyoung _really_ doesn’t know how to explain. “Mingyu, you say it.”

“Um,” Mingyu starts, “so basically, at the beginning of the summer Soonyoung and I saw this list graffitied on the convenience store wall and, I don't know. We’ve just been trying to get all of the items.”

He pulls up the picture on his phone screen and slides it over to Minghao. And it actually sounds so stupid when Mingyu says it out loud. Their crack operation for the summer while Mingyu’s waiting for his friends to get back from America. Soonyoung is fully prepared for Minghao to say that it's stupid in that blunt way of his, for him to laugh.

Instead, Minghao asks slowly, “You guys know what yabbays are, right? Like… that’s what you’re trying to do? Summon one or break it free or whatever?”

Mingyu looks impressed. Soonyoung’s jaw drops; Minghao sounds completely serious.

“What?” Soonyoung says slowly. “You believe in them?”  

Minghao stares down at his shoes. “You know these earrings?” he points to them. “I woke up on New Year’s and they were on my bedside table. Like someone had given them to me. I mean… I don’t… yabbays are just a _story_ …”   

He glares at them with a sense of helplessness, like he’s daring them to judge him. Soonyoung’s got no explanation for Minghao’s earrings, and he refuses to believe that their ghost town, somehow, has been a checkpoint for a magical occurrence— but he and Mingyu are both looking at the silver moons affixed to Minghao’s earlobes with the exact same thought in mind.

Minghao draws the conclusion, too. He’s already taking the earrings out of his ears and handing them to Soonyoung. “My only condition is that I get them back afterward,” he says. “I’ll kill both of you if I don’t.”

Mingyu nods, and says to Soonyoung, “Be back in thirty minutes, I’ll go get all of the other stuff we’ve collected.”

And Soonyoung, as he watches Mingyu dash out the doors, taking off full sprint down the road, can’t help but feel his heart rate ramp up. It’s just a collection of coincidences, he tells himself. It’s not _possible_. The list was always a method to pass the time, a script for Mingyu and Soonyoung to follow for the summer. And they’ve found everything, now.

\---

Mingyu skids back into the shop half an hour later, holding a cardboard box. Minghao opens the flaps, frowning a little at the contents, but seems to accept it anyway. Jeonghan’s stopped trying to write and has joined them. “What’s going on?” he asks. “Why is there My Little Pony glitter in the box?”

No one answers him. Minghao’s setting each of the items on the table. He stops short at the miniature piano, an admiring expression on his face. “Did you guys _make_ this?”

Soonyoung says, “It was all Mingyu.”

Minghao looks pained. “This is really good,” he tells Mingyu grudgingly, and continues lining up the items.

Jeonghan seems like he’s going to explode from curiosity but keeps his mouth shut.

At the very end, Minghao places his earrings on the table, stepping away from them with a sense of reluctance. “Alright,” he says slowly. “So… what are we supposed to do now?”

Soonyoung feels slightly foolish. “I don’t know, the graffiti didn’t say.”

They turn expectantly to Mingyu, like he should know. Mingyu chews on his lip, then closes his eyes, setting his hands on the table. Voice sonorous, he says, “I’ll dance with you on the thirteenth month in the place that only we know.”

One. Two. Three.

Nothing happens.

Soonyoung lets out a breath that he didn’t know he’d been holding, feeling strangely empty. Of course— what did he expect? A spirit to rise out of the items? For the objects  to blend together to form a person? He casts his eyes down. He _knew_ it was going to end like this, that yabbays were just a myth, but—

“Damn,” Minghao says. “That was anticlimactic.” He shakes his head. “I swear, Mingyu, you got me going there with the voice for a second. That was pretty cool.”

“What is going _on_ ,” Jeonghan says again. “What am I missing?”

“Nothing,” Soonyoung says, with a derisive roll of his eyes.  “I mean, c’mon, it’s convenience store graffiti. You’re not going to find _anything_ legit there.”

Minghao’s already laughing; Soonyoung goes and joins him. “Maybe we needed to arrange it in the shape of a diamond?” Minghao wheezes. “Maybe the yabbay was insulted about the low budget? Hey, spirits, we’re _broke_ here!”

Soonyoung nudges Mingyu’s arm. “Told you yabbays weren’t real.”

Mingyu shakes his head. “I guess not, then.” He hands Minghao back his earrings, gives Soonyoung the taekwondo belt. “Sorry for wasting your time, guys.”  

\---

Soonyoung is on the front lawn and it feels like the start of summer all over again, except he’s looking at a shorter stretch of time and he’s got a slight kind of melancholy over something _ending_. Like post-concert depression, which Soonyoung doesn’t know personally, but if he saw SHINee and had to leave the stadium, he’d be pretty sad.

“Hey,” Mingyu says, crossing the driveway and sitting down on the grass with Soonyoung. He’s tanner than he was at the beginning of the summer, ten thousand shades of brown and gold and bronze.

“Hey.”

“Joshua’s back in town,” Mingyu says casually. “Back from the states.”

Soonyoung feels his insides crumble. Because _yeah_ , he’s been telling himself the past month that he’s Mingyu’s platonic fling for the summer, but he’s been forgetting to remind himself near the end. Mingyu was so kind, and funny, and Soonyoung— he doesn’t even know. He didn’t expect Mingyu to say anything like that, so blatantly.

“Good to know,” Soonyoung forces himself to say. “I hope you had fun with the list.”

Mingyu’s eyebrows furrow in confusion. “What do you mean?”

Soonyoung can’t stand him. “You know what, I’m tired—”

“It’s the middle of the day, Kwon Soonyoung,” Mingyu says, hand clasping around Soonyoung’s wrist and holding him in place. “Tell me what’s up. You’re being weird.”

Soonyoung squirms. Jesus, Mingyu is _strong_ — Soonyoung’s never experienced it firsthand but his grip is like iron. “You… it was cool,” Soonyoung stammers. “Finding all that random shit with you. Is that what you wanted me to say?”

“ _No_ ,” Mingyu says. “I don’t get it… do you not want to talk to me anymore?”

“What the fuck do you mean, do _I_ not want to talk to you anymore?” Soonyoung’s always had trouble controlling his loudness and his voice is ramping up quickly. He forces the words out of his mouth. “Didn’t you literally just spend the last month hanging out with me because I was the only one around? To complete that fucking stupid list?”

Mingyu’s grip slackens. Soonyoung tries to shake his hand off, and he tightens his fingers again. “So let me get this straight,” Mingyu says slowly, “you thought I spent the past three weeks with you over a _list_. Because I was bored, or some shit.”

“... Yes.”

“Kwon Soonyoung, what the actual hell. You want the full story? I could’ve cared less about summoning a yabbay, although it would’ve been cool if those existed. Because you know what? I like you, Soonyoung! And not in the friend way!”

Holy shit, this is _not_ protocol. “I— I’m sorry, what?”

“Goddammit, Soonyoung, I’ve thought you were cute ever since _elementary school_ ,” Mingyu says, shaking his head. “That whole list was just an excuse to hang out with you. I told you about Joshua coming back here because I wanted you to meet him, to prove we were actually talking. Are you _actually_ making me spell this out for you?”

Soonyoung says weakly. “You like me.”

“You’re not usually this dense,” Mingyu jokes, although his entire face is red and his voice is coming out wrong.

And the thing is that dating someone has never been part of Soonyoung’s plan. The goal has always just been to get out of this place; everything else is just a distraction. He hates couples that make out in front of the lockers and gets everyone banned out of the lounge for having sex on the long benches, for getting so wrapped up in something with clear expiration dates.

But he’s been falling for Mingyu all summer, so there’s that. He thinks he wouldn’t mind kissing him. He really, _really_ wouldn’t mind kissing him.

“It’s a lot of information to dump on one person at a time,” Soonyoung shoots back, fumbling his words because he’s not good at this. “Next thing you know we’ll be finding out that yabbay thing _did_ work…”  

“I’m sorry, then,” Mingyu says sincerely, and Soonyoung realizes in horror that Mingyu’s misinterpreted. His chin is tucked into his chest, eyes cast down. “I hope it’s not too awkward for you.”

Soonyoung furiously shakes his head, picturing M&M’s flying out in all directions. “No, I’m not saying— I mean, c’mon, Mingyu, who _wouldn’t_ have a crush on you, let’s be real here,” Soonyoung blurts out, and Mingyu’s gaze snaps back up, hopeful. “I just haven’t done this… relationship stuff before.”

“But are you saying you wouldn’t mind going out with me?” Mingyu asks, slowly.

“ _Going out_ is such a strong term,” Soonyoung mumbles. He refuses to be a high-school romance. It’s just not something he’ll do. “I’m just saying, I like you. I guess.”

Mingyu beams and it’s like the sun. “Alright, we can take it slow, then.” And then, like absolutely nothing out of the ordinary had just happened, he asks, “do you wanna go to the convenience store with me? We’re out of milk.”

\---

Mingyu says slow and he does slow.

Soonyoung should appreciate it. He’s the one who installed that guideline, after all. But he forgets he has trouble with slow, whether it’s with food or sports or now, apparently, with Kim Mingyu. Soonyoung is a cynic built traitorously for love, with hands that fit intertwined with someone else’s and a mouth that spews out the most _embarrassing_ things and lips that slot perfectly with another pair.

The last one happens right before his shift. He’s five minutes early, and Mingyu’s behind the counter with him while he checks inventory. Hee notices the tiny studs in Mingyu’s ears, and the canister of pineapple skids dangerously close to the edge of the table.

“The earrings a new development?” His voice is too high.

Mingyu touches them, self-conscious. “Oh— yeah! Minghao helped me out with them. actually. Did you know it actually doesn’t hurt too much to get them pierced? This is going to be my only pair for awhile, though…”  

And Soonyoung _should_ make a joke about how Mingyu probably sold his organs for just half of one of those earrings, should make a joke about how he probably shrieked when the staple gun came within five feet of him. This is what he should do. This is what Mingyu is expecting.

Instead, Soonyoung kisses him.

It’s actually awful. Soonyoung had neglected the pineapple canister and Mingyu is so surprised he ends up tipping it off the table, and Soonyoung has to do a dive to save the pineapple chunks from their impending doom.

“Nice save,” Mingyu says, looking like someone’s thrown a brick at his head.

“Fast reflexes,” Soonyoung mumbles, getting up off the ground. “Uh.”

“You guys are such a mess,” Minghao says, and Soonyoung nearly drops the abused pineapple a _third_ time. He’s standing in the doorway, looking extraordinarily amused. “I won’t say anything else, though. You two do whatever.”

And Soonyoung knows perfectly well that Minghao _knows_ , and _saw_ , and he knows perfectly well that Minghao relays the information to a smirking Jeonghan two days later, but he finds that he doesn’t mind so much. He doesn’t call Mingyu his boyfriend, and Minghao never brings their thing up. (Jeonghan— not so much.)

They might stay together over the school year, they might not, but for Soonyoung, Mingyu is what paints their monochrome town technicolor, and maybe that’s good enough for now.

 

**[Extra: Minghao]**

 

Summer winds down to a close eventually. The air is still warm with heat but school’s starting next week, and Minghao’s scrambling to duct-tape the holes in his backpack and buy notebooks in bulk from the local convenience store. He nearly fights a kid in Aisle 17 for the last college-ruled spiral; _that_ was a time.

He got the notebook, though, so he can’t say he’s sorry.

Minghao is neutral about going back. He doesn’t actually mind the late-night cram sessions and downpour of tests— he’s built for that kind of stress. But he’s not looking forward to dealing with all the people, and he’s going to miss working with Kwon Soonyoung, not that he’d admit it.

This shift is their last one, and Soonyoung needs to leave a few minutes early to attend some club introduction meeting.

“See ya,” he says, hanging up his apron.

“Bye,” Minghao says, looking up from shelving fruit canisters. “Here’s to hoping that my next coworker’s not a complete ass, you _ditcher_.”

“I’d say I’m sorry, but I’m not,” Soonyoung says, grinning cheekily. He waves. “I’ll miss the free pineapple chunks, though. You better talk to me in school!”

Minghao watches Soonyoung jog out the doors and hop down the curb, a small smile on his face. He’s something else— Minghao might’ve asked him out, but he knew he never had any chance. But he’ll look forward to seeing Soonyoung next year— it’s always nice to find someone he can talk to.

Five minutes before closing time Minghao’s closing the icebox and putting away the scoop when the door to the shop swings open. _What kind of clueless fucker_ —

The thought dies out halfway.

There’s a boy standing in the doorway of _Seventeen_ , hair silvery pink, with the kind of face that’ll probably result in him being kidnapped by a fashion agency someday.

And it’s like—

It’s like Minghao _knows_ him, or something.

“Hi, I’m really sorry, I know you’re about to close up,” the boy says, walking up to the counter. The edges of his words are slightly accented. “But do you know happen to know where Pinwheel Street is?”

Minghao refuses to make a fool of himself. “It’s two roads over to the right, this place really isn’t too hard to navigate,” he says, mind spinning rapidly. Where’d he see this guy before? “Um, if you just wanted directions…”

“Oh, right, I’ll— I’ll leave.” He looks— almost disappointed. “Sorry to bother you.”

He turns around and Minghao catches the gold stars in his ears, and it’s _this_ that finally makes Minghao call out, “Wait.”

He turns around. “Yeah?”

“You seem really familiar,” Minghao fumbles. “What’s your name?”

“I’m Wen Junhui. You probably mistook me for someone else, though, since I just moved to the neighborhood,” he says politely. “What about you?”

Junhui. Minghao’s never heard that name before. “Xu Minghao,” he says slowly.

Junhui waves at him before walking out the door, and Minghao stares at his retreating back. He believes Junhui when he says they’ve never met— it’s not like he has any reason to lie— but his mind isn’t satisfied. It pricks at him like a splinter the rest of the way home, and he nearly walks into a tree in his distracted state.

Unconsciously, he touches his earrings.

When Minghao walks into his homeroom on the first day of school, Junhui is there. Minghao goes ahead and takes a seat next to him; he seems surprised, but then there’s the flicker of recognition. _Oh, you’re that kid from the smoothie shop_.

Somewhere in the recesses of Minghao’s mind there’s a dim memory, nearly torn to shreds. It’s the day before New Year’s and there’s a boy completely in white, a choker on his neck that crackles with magic, he and Minghao standing out on the streets. There’s a quiet gift and an exchange of hopes to meet again.

But Minghao doesn’t remember any of this. For now, he just takes out his pencil and notebook and props his chin on his hand, a small sigh escaping his mouth when the teacher walks in again. Another twelve months and he’ll be out of this ghost town, but for now…

Maybe he’ll find something worth staying for.

**Author's Note:**

> hello im going to die tomorrow please inscribe the chorus of clap into my tombstone thank you


End file.
